


Giants Think the World is Theirs

by Secretmonkey



Category: Carmilla (Web Series), Faking It (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Older Faking It Characters, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-13 21:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4538073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Secretmonkey/pseuds/Secretmonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crossover AU for Faking It and Carmilla.  Reagan is a hunter, but after tragedy strikes she retreats from the world until an old friend drags her back into the world of monsters and, eventually, to the halls of Silas University.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_**A/N: Total AU for both FI and Carmilla. Lots will be the same, but pretty significant differences. FI characters older, Carmilla all the same. The rest you can figure out as you go...** _

It's been a year and a half and not a damn thing's changed.

Reagan thinks something should have. Something.  _Everything_.

The world should have started spinning the other direction, or it should have just stopped, frozen in place at the exact moment they found her. The sun shouldn't rise, the moon should disappear, the ground should open up and swallow them all whole.

It  _has_  to change, she thinks. It's all sideways anyhow, everything should just go the distance, just finish the fucking job. Maybe then it would make some sense, maybe then it there'd be some logic to it. Maybe that's what she needs to happen, maybe she needs some sort of bizzaro version of the life she had.

Karma could look at her again. Liam wouldn't spend all of his time and money fighting battles he can't win. Shane wouldn't be such a useless fuck and Amy….

And maybe, she thinks, she just needs a world where the monsters are heroes and everyone knows people like her for the killers they really are.

It doesn't really matter how or why or what, but it should all be different, it should all be changed.

Amy Raudenfeld-Solis is dead and the universe should fucking acknowledge it. There should be no more normal, there should be no more same.

Except there is. There's been 578 days of same. 578 days of everything - and every _one_  - else carrying on and moving along and things working out for people and no one else

(except maybe Lauren and Farrah and Liam and - wherever the fuck she is - Karma)

even seeming to notice how fucking wrong everything is, and everything working as it should and the status being very fucking quo.

There's been 578 days Amy's never seen.

And that?

Is just not  _right._

And no matter how many nights she spends sitting here drinking instead of out there, doing what she's meant to do, she knows it won't bring Amy back. She knows hiding isn't doing anyone any good, hell, she knows some people - probably some good and innocent people - are most likely dead because she isn't doing her job.

Reagan tries really hard to care about that. She does.

But all that really matters to her is that one exceptionally good and innocent and amazing person is dead because she  _did_ her job. And that, in the end, whether she does it or no, whether she sits here at this bar drinking her life away or if she gets off her ass and starts hunting again, it won't matter.

It won't save anyone else. They're all doomed, her friends, her family. Amy's dead, Karma's lost, and Liam's slowly slipping away.

And in the end? It'll get them all.

She just hopes it doesn't leave her for last.

Nothing's ever going to change and she's got 578 days worth of proof.

It's been a year and a fucking half and nothing has changed.

And Reagan's not sure just how much longer she can live with that.

* * *

It was Lauren who found her - 578 days ago - and as unbelievably selfish as it is

(and it  _so_  is and Reagan tries really hard to feel guilty about it)

Reagan thanks God everyday that it wasn't her.

If it had been, if she'd been the one to find Amy like that - lifeless and bloodied

(shredded) (that was the word the coroner used) ( _shredded_ )

Reagan's quite sure she would have lost her fucking mind.

Sometimes, she's not entirely sure she hasn't.

Lauren held it together. Reagan had seen things - things most of them couldn't imagine - but it was the little blonde who had kept everything in order, had made sure they took all the right steps, handled everything in just the right way.

Reagan knew Lauren was good in a crisis - she'd seen that first hand - but this? This was some next level shit.

By the time Reagan got there, to the woods out back of the townhouse Lauren and Theo were renting while their dream home was being built and the adoption of their first daughter was being finalized, Lauren had taken complete control.

That wasn't anything unusual, was actually perfectly normal.

The last normal thing any of them experienced that night.

Lauren had cleaned up Amy as best she could. She didn't know what else to do, how else she could really help. But she knew if seeing Amy like that was as painful as it was for her?

It would fucking kill Reagan.

So she used towels and when the towels were soaked through with blood

(her sister's blood) (and she  _so_  couldn't think of that)

she had Theo bring her sponges and a bucket and she soaked it up, as much as she could and did everything she could to minimize the damage - the visible damage - because she  _knew_  they were going to need as clear-headed a Reagan as they could possibly get.

Whatever - and Lauren knew it was a  _what_ , not a who - had done this was still out there.

She cleaned Amy as best she could and then set about arranging what was left of her sister's clothes - what wasn't torn away completely or soaked in so much blood that she had no choice but to rip off the fabric in shreds and give them to Theo to toss - trying, in vain mostly, to cover the worst of the wounds.

The ones that just wouldn't come clean.

(The ones Reagan knows Lauren sees every time she shuts her eyes)

When she arrived, Reagan kept her distance, standing next to Theo, silently watching Lauren work and trying not to think about how bad it must have been  _before._

"She shouldn't be doing that," Theo said, his voice cracking and frighteningly loud in the silence of the back yard. "She's tampering. This is a crime scene. There could be evidence, traces, fibers and shit."

Reagan didn't say a word - she didn't trust her voice, didn't trust that she could open her mouth and do anything but scream - but she reached out blindly and took his hand in hers.

Theo's hands were big, bigger than Amy's

(and Reagan had to bite back a cry at the thought that she'd never hold her wife's hand again)

and as he laced his fingers with hers, Reagan felt an odd sense of comfort, of safety.

Of  _normal_.

She's often thought that one moment might have been the only thing that got her through that night.

Theo might have left the force, might have quit trying to fight the good fight with laws and rules and punishments when he realized just how much bigger the fight was than he could have ever imagined

(one more thing on a long fucking list of things Reagan has to feel guilty for)

but Theo was still - at heart - a cop to the end. He couldn't help it, couldn't help but worry about trace evidence and fingerprints and DNA. That was still  _his_ world and as ridiculous as Reagan knew it was, as ridiculous as  _he_  knew it was, they both found a moment's comfort in something normal.

Something sane.

A killer. Some random homeless person trying to steal money. A sexual predator lurking along the wooded trails waiting for an easy mark.

Someone horribly average, horribly un-noticeable, horribly mundane and horribly….

 _human_.

That was how the story always went, right? They'd find someone and everyone who knew him would remark on how nice he was and how serene he seemed and how they never would have imagined he could have done something like that.

Sometimes, Reagan knew, the worst of the monsters were the ones that were utterly human.

Reagan and Theo and even Lauren knew that  _anyone_  could do  _anything_  if pushed hard enough, pushed far enough.

And they knew that there would be no guy, no vagrant, no sex fiend, no killer found hiding and bloodied in the woods.

Nothing mundane. Nothing average.

Nothing human.

They knew that as sure as they knew there was no evidence here, nothing  _the cops_  could work with. No traces of anything, at least not anything  _they'd_  understand.

Lauren and Theo hadn't seen as much as Reagan or even Amy had. Reagan had done everything she could to shield her friends and family from that world, done all she could to keep her secret.

She'd even thought about leaving, thought about it so many fucking times. It was the only way, she  _knew_  that. The only way she could keep them all safe was if she was nowhere fucking near them.

But she'd never left. She'd stayed. And every day - every day when nothing happened, when they all went to bed at night safe and sound and loved - Reagan worried about it a little less.

She should have known better. People like her don't get the happy endings. They get what they've earned.

It's karma.

So maybe Lauren and Theo only knew it mostly in the abstract, maybe they'd never lived as fully in her world as Amy or even Karma and Liam had, but they'd both seen enough to know that whatever had done this was nothing the cops could handle. Nothing they'd even begin to understand.

And whatever it was, whatever had taken Amy from them was out there still. Waiting. Watching.

 _Hunting_.

They stood there together, Reagan and Theo, holding onto each other and that small bit of normal they had left, because they both knew it was slipping away, that whatever normalcy they'd been able to pretend their lives still had?

It died with Amy.

When Lauren finally pushed herself to her feet, Theo hurried to her side to help. And when Lauren, who would have  _always_  swatted his helping hands away, took them without a word, Reagan knew how bad it really was.

Even before she got her first look at Amy.

She resisted, as long as she could, actually looking at her wife. It was easier that way, easier to focus on the ground or the brush or the wreckage left behind by whatever had done this. She could be clinical then, look at the way her father had trained her, like a hunter, not like a wife or a lover or a friend.

If she just focused on everything  _around_  the body

(and oh, fuck, that's what Amy was)

( _the body_ )

it was easier, but easier didn't mean  _better_ , because the body was still there and the body was still  _Amy_ and there was no amount of clinical, no amount of training, no amount of hunter in her that would  _ever_  make Reagan OK with  _that_.

But she had to try. It was either try or lay down on the ground next to her wife and die.

And Reagan might not have been OK - she didn't think she'd ever be OK again - but she wasn't ready for that. Not yet.

So she focused on the ground, all of it, every bit of dirt and grass and rock surrounding Amy  _was_ blood, the red staining everything, leaving an outline Reagan was sure wouldn't fade for months, if ever. But that was  _something_ , a sign, a - no matter how ridiculous the word sounded right then -  _clue_.

Whatever had done this, it had let Amy bleed out, let her life flow out of the slashes and scrapes and wounds and saturate the ground.

It hadn't fed.

Cold comfort, but Reagan was pretty sure that was the only kind she'd be getting any time soon.

The brush - a few scraggly bushes and a small tree or two - told Reagan more. They were battered, branches snapped, needles and leaves bent and broken and dangling and sprayed across the ground.

They had fought. Amy and the… whatever. It wasn't much of a fight - Amy had never really had a chance - but she hadn't gone easy and that was… something.

Reagan could picture it, could eye the pattern of debris and destruction and visualize her wife fighting, using every trick, every tactic, every move Reagan had taught her.

Amy always wanted to learn more. Always.

Reagan had been the one to say enough. The one to know that if what she'd already taught her wasn't enough, Amy never stood a chance anyway.

Whatever had done this was too strong, too quick. It had darted around Amy, always a step ahead of her strikes, always a heartbeat quicker than every move she tried.

It had toyed with her, fucked with her, let her think she had hope, a chance. Reagan had seen it before, seen the way  _things_  would kill, the way they would tease and taunt, the way they would keep their prey

(Amy had been  _prey_ )

standing, literally alive and kicking. It kept the blood flowing, kept the heart racing, it made everything - the flesh and the blood and all the rest - taste better.

Made it all taste alive.

Reagan felt her knees buckle and her stomach turn over but she pushed on, striding forward, never breaking, never pausing. She wouldn't open that door, she wouldn't let herself crack or crumble or falter because if she did, if she started down that road, she knew she'd never stop.

She would run and never look back.

Her eyes stayed on Amy's face, on the parts that weren't scratched or bruised or clearly - so fucking clearly - broken. Reagan focused on Amy's eyes - she didn't know if they'd always been closed or if Lauren had done it - but it was almost enough, almost enough for Reagan to convince herself that Amy was just sleeping.

Just another of a thousand tiny naps on their couch, another of a thousand night's sleep in their bed.

Reagan settled on the ground next to her wife and gently reached out, the pad of her thumb brushing softly against Amy's cheek, and she had to repress a shudder at the thin shadow of red that followed across Amy's skin.

She had seen worse. She had  _done_  worse. But this… this was Amy. This was her wife, the woman she'd been with since she was nineteen years old. And this was just too much, Reagan couldn't. She just… _couldn't_.

So she didn't.

She laid down on the ground, cradling her wife's body against her chest and cried until she couldn't see, couldn't think, couldn't be.

That's where her father and her brother found her, holding her wife's body and staring into space and just not… there.

* * *

The first time it happened was in this very bar.

Almost every time it happened, every time she found some cheap bit of ass that she could bury her anger and pain and frustration in , it was in this bar. It would have had to be, Reagan didn't spend much time anywhere else. Here and her house

( _their_ house)

(and it would  _never_ happen there)

(even Reagan had limits and fucking another woman on  _their_ bed was  _so_  far past those limits)

her house and here, that was pretty much it.

She had something of a routine, if you wanted to call it that. Drink. Sleep. Repeat.

Sometimes she skipped the drink. Sometimes the sleep. But it all rolled around again, day after day, night after night.

578 times.

They'd all tried, at first, to pull her out of it. But then, slowly, they all fell away.

Theo and Lauren's adoption came through and they had their hands full taking care of - as Lauren put it - an 'actual child'.

Shane and Duke broke up - again - and when reconciliation number five or six or whatever the fuck it was didn't happen, Shane slowly drifted away and, honestly, Reagan was surprised it took him that long.

Shane had never been capable of handling this life. He was great with high school drama, with fake lesbians and outing everyone in sight, but when it came to the real world - the  _real_  world - Shane flat out sucked. He and Duke couldn't never make it work because Shane couldn't handle being with someone who lived so much in the gray

(probably, Reagan always thought, another thing she was to blame for, but Duke was  _good_  and a good hunter is hard to come by)

and hid from the light. So, yeah, she wasn't all that shocked when Shane stopped calling, stopped texting, stopped coming round.

He left flowers, the most beautiful ones you could ever imagine, on Amy's grave every week.

At least there was that.

That left Liam and Reagan didn't suppose she was ever going to get rid of  _him_. She'd lost Amy. He'd lost Karma. Her pain was a little different

(Karma was alive. Somewhere in Europe, last Reagan had known, near Austria, maybe?)

(Gone, but alive.)

but they still had that in common. It had always been their bond anyway, each of them being in love with half of Karmy. They'd all long since gotten past  _that_. Amy's feelings for Karma had never amounted to a half of what she felt for Reagan. And everyone knew Liam was Karma's one true love.

The four of them had made their peace. They - with Shane and Reagan and Theo - had made themselves into an odd, but working, family.

Which might have explained why it hurt them all so much when Karma left. When she and Liam broke, when Reagan had had to make a choice.

She'd made the right one, she  _knew_ that. Yes, it hurt Liam and no, she didn't know if it hurt him more or less or just… differently… than if she'd chosen the other way, but Reagan would never believe - hunter training or not - that she'd ever really  _had_ a choice.

Liam had become her best friend. And Karma was - and always would be - Amy's.

So, yeah, werewolf or not, killing Karma wasn't a fucking option.

Liam had never been the same

(a feeling Reagan can easily grasp)

and he'd been something of a mess for quite a while. He didn't follow the drink, sleep, repeat pattern. His was more crush the weak, take their money, repeat.

In a short six months after finding out his wife was one of the monsters he'd come to despise

(and fucking another one)

Liam had become the man his father

(father, grandfather, what-the-fuck-ever)

had always wished him to be.

And it almost killed him. Literally. If not for Reagan and her brother, Liam's dealings with some very, very bad men and the very. very bad things they did with the bodies of virgins

(why was it always virgins?)

might have ended far differently.

He owed Reagan his life. And while he'd repaid  _that_ debt already

(there was an incident in Belize and the less said about that, the better)

Liam had been reborn or - at the very least - repurposed. There would be no more crushing, no more taking of the monies. He was - finally - going to be the man of integrity he'd always portrayed himself as. He was going to  _help_.

And Reagan was his first 'victim'.

She would never admit it -  _ever_  - but Reagan was grateful for him. She was fucked up, way past the point of no return in most ways, but Liam kept her from finishing the job.

The first - and  _last_  - time she tried to go hunting while drunk, it had been Liam that stopped her

(she might have preferred something other knocking her out from behind and stuffing her in his trunk, but it did work)

and then - when she'd come to and he was sure there were no weapons in the vicinity - he confronted her.

"You got a fucking death wish or something?"

She didn't answer, did nothing but stare forlornly at her gun and her knife and her stake, piled high on her kitchen table, just out of reach.

He wouldn't understand, she thought.

No, she didn't have a death wish.

But she didn't have much of a life wish anymore either.

To his credit, Liam didn't dick around, he didn't even  _try_  to understand. He just put it in terms  _she'd_ understand.

"If Amy saw you like this, she'd never forgive you."

Liam had apparently thought a hungover, groggy, and unarmed Reagan was a less dangerous Reagan, a notion she quickly disabused him of by kicking him in the face and knocking him cold.

She was there, with ice and a beer, when he came to.

He might have been a prick about it, but Reagan couldn't say he was wrong. She never went hunting drunk again.

She never went hunting again, period. At least not for monsters.

The first time it happened - in this very bar - the girl looked just like Amy.

If Amy was six inches shorter. And had a pixie cut. And a dozen or so tattoos running up one arm and very obvious submissive side and a lust for pain.

So, basically,  _exactly_  like Amy if - like Reagan - you were half past the point of too fucking drunk to really care.

She took Ms. not-so-much-like Amy upstairs, to the room over the bar she rented for exactly this reason

(a few hundred bucks and promising not to kill the vampire bartender went a long way)

and proceeded to make her scream

(never ask a hunter to hurt you, at least not when she's too drunk to remember - or care about - your safe words)

and then, when the girl's begging reminded her too much of Karma

( _Please, Reagan. I'm sorry.)_

and her tears reminded her too much of Lauren

(and Farrah and Mrs. Ashcroft and all of Amy's students lined up at the back of the church)

and she just couldn't fucking take one more second of it, she dropped to her knees and begged forgiveness

(she might -  _might_  - have called her Amy)

and slid her head between the girl's thighs, making her scream in a whole different way until the poor thing blacked out and Reagan left her there, staggering home with her wedding ring in her pocket and a bottle of Jack in a brown paper bag.

Not her proudest moment.

Not her worst either.

 _That_ one, the last time it happened - a week ago, now - was all Liam's fault.

He threw a party. More accurately, Squirkle threw a party and Liam was informed, in no uncertain terms, that if he wanted to continue doing whatever the hell it was with the company jet and the company's money and the assorted favors he was calling in from all corners, his attendance was expected.

The divorce had been bad press. Karma's affair - or what the press had assumed was an affair - had damaged Liam's brand, and that was simply unacceptable. The scion of Squirkle needed to make an appearance, he needed to keep up his image, to remind the world of the real Liam Booker.

"If the world knew the real me," he said to Reagan, "they'd have me locked up in a padded cell and you'd be in the one next to me."

He wasn't wrong.

"My grandfather's going to want some eye candy on my arm," he said. "And I can't deal with whatever rent-a-date he's picked for me." He eyed her carefully, still wary of sudden kicks even after all these months. "And you owe me."

Reagan arched an eyebrow

(and Liam almost cried, it had been so fucking long since she'd done anything remotely that normal)

and scooted a little further back on the sofa. "I owe you?"

Liam grinned. "Remember Belize?"

Reagan rolled her eyes and reminded him - gently - that they'd sworn to never speak of that again and that, by her reckoning,  _that_  had been  _him_  repaying  _her_.

"I saved you  _and_  your brother  _and_ killed three very pissed off trolls," he said. "I think that more than exceeded any debt I owed you."

"I didn't kill your wife when I found her fucking a werewolf."

(Reagan had long since learned to never say 'another' werewolf)

"I wish you had," Liam said, somehow managing to hold her gaze as he outright lied. "So you owe me."

Reagan had also long since learned to let Liam have his little lies and his proclamations of hating his ex-wife and wishing her dead.

(Even if she'd kill - or die - to have Amy out there, somewhere, for her to hate)

So, she'd agreed and let Lauren work her magic and doll her up, talking all the while about how good it was she was getting out and doing  _something_.

Theo watched from the door to their bedroom - Lauren's makeover headquarters - holding the baby

(two months old)

(they named her Amy)

(Reagan's never held her) (not even once)

and studying Reagan. He was trying not to be obvious about it, but Reagan knew. She understood, really she did.

Lauren loved her, she always had, she always would. And love can blind you, love can make you miss what's right in front of your fucking face

(like it had done to Amy)

and maybe Lauren knew that and maybe she was OK with it, but Theo? He had a life to protect - two of them, actually - and that trumped any love he might have had for Reagan, any pity he felt for her loss, it trumped everything.

If keeping Lauren and little Amy safe meant watching Reagan, meant considering her more threat than family?

He was OK with that.

Reagan went to the party, staying on Liam's arm most of the night, even staying sober, which did little to help her fight off the urge to find someone - some _thing_  - to kill.

If she'd thought about it, if she'd given it even a second's thought, Reagan would have realized the storage room was the last place she should have snuck off to when everything got to be a bit much and she needed a moment - just one  _fucking_ moment - of peace.

The cater-waiter girl restocking the champagne didn't look a thing like Amy, and Reagan wasn't drunk so she couldn't pretend she did. But it didn't matter.

If she'd thought about it, if she'd given it even a moment's consideration, Reagan would have known what she was doing. It would have sunk in when she asked the girl to say it.

"There are no boyfriends around me right now."

It was rushed, hurried, like it was a fact she was used to, something she didn't have to think about, the words coming too fucking easy.

So  _not_  Amy.

Reagan shook her head

(which, since it was between the girl's thighs, might not have gotten her point across quite the way she wanted)

and she stopped what she was doing just long enough to correct her.

"Slower," Reagan said. "Stammer a little. Like you're nervous."

"There are no… boyfriends… around me… right now?"

If someone had asked her later just what the fuck she thought that was going to do for her, what she could have possibly been thinking, Reagan wouldn't have had an answer. But she would have been pretty sure it  _wasn't_ supposed to make her fall apart. It wasn't supposed to make her absolutely lose her shit and end up in the fetal position on the storage room floor sobbing.

It was Liam who found her, the little cater-waiter girl recognizing him as Reagan's boyfriend and - discreetly - bringing him to the storage room.

Liam didn't ask what had happened, exactly - he didn't want to know - instead, he tipped the girl

(very well)

to keep her mouth shut and to make sure no one else came into the storage room the rest of the night. He settled down on the floor, tugging Reagan into his side, wrapping her up in his suit jacket and his arms.

They spent the rest of the party - Liam's family be damned - huddled there together between the bottles of champagne

( _I squirkled it_ )

and hors d'oeuvre trays, five hundred and sixty-some-odd days worth of pain roaring out of Reagan now that there was no alcohol-slash-sex cork in the bottle.

And when the party-goers had all left and the catering staff was finished with its cleanup, Liam slipped from the room and out into the hall, pulling his cell phone from his pocket and dialing a number he'd thought he'd never use again, while Reagan pretended to sleep.

"Karma? It's me. When you get this message… I… It's Reagan. She needs you." This had gone way past what he or Lauren or anyone could do. "Karma, can you… come home? Please?"

* * *

Reagan found out later that it was Lauren who made the call, who fished her cell phone out of her pocket and used speed dial to call her father and her brother.

Lauren was smart, she understood. She got that there were certain things that needed to be done. The cops, for one. They couldn't see Amy like this

(and neither could Farrah or Bruce or anyone else)

it would just complicate things, create too many questions they couldn't - or wouldn't - answer, and while Lauren's clean up job was good, it was going to take more than some towels and sponges to cover the truth.

Martin, Reagan's father could do it. He could cast the spell, it was simple enough. A basic bit of magic Martin had probably learned in his teens, back in the days before he'd really become a hunter, before he'd taken in Glenn and then Reagan, making his own little makeshift family.

It was a few words, some basic ingredients Lauren had laying around in her kitchen, a protective circle

(one he drew in Amy's blood and Reagan has always been  _so_  fucking glad she was still out of it for that part)

and - to the world - Amy looked, for lack of a more fitting word - better.

Dead. But better.

No more blood. No more wounds.

Reagan found out later that Theo was the one who reached out, who contacted the few cops they knew and trusted, who, in turn, made sure Amy's body was seen by  _their_ coroner, the one who would tell the family the truth they needed to hear

(heart attack) (undiagnosed heart condition) (tragic) (perfectly natural)

and give Reagan reality.

(Shredded) (Three dozen wounds, all of them deep, half of them fatal on their own)

(everything else intact)

The coroner - a frumpy little man Reagan was sure would have been happier as a high school biology teacher - tried to make it better.

"She probably died quickly," he said. "The first or second wound, for sure. It's likely she didn't feel much pain at all."

Reagan didn't tell him that she knew of at least fifteen separate creatures that could keep their victims alive through dozens of supposedly mortal wounds for the express purpose of making sure they felt  _every fucking one of them_.

Amy had felt it. Reagan knew. She'd felt every bit.

Reagan found out later that it was Liam who made the arrangements and took care of everything, refusing to let Farrah or Bruce have to worry about any of it. He covered it all, the casket, the service, the beautiful marble marker.

He called Karma. Flew her in on the Squirkle corporate jet, met her at the airport, nodding silently when she asked him if it was real and holding her when she collapsed in the jetway, his heart breaking for the woman he'd loved

( _loves_ )

and he let her stay, along with Lauren and Theo, at the Booker family compound, telling his grandfather to - quote - 'go fuck yourself' when he suggested that might not have been the best idea.

Reagan found out later how they had all stepped up. How they had rallied around her, circled the wagons, made arrangements and notifications and, basically, kept the day to day life running.

She found out how her brother and father

(and Duke and, begrudgingly, Shane)

had started quietly digging. Nosing around, working as many of their contacts as they could, trying to find out something - anything - on what monster had done this to Amy.

Reagan found all that out later, when she could function again, when she could breathe, when she had two or three drinks in her and the rawest of her nerves were at least slightly numb.

She found out all that. But in 578 days, no one - not Martin or Glenn or Liam or even Reagan - found the monster. There was nothing. No suspects. no evidence, no leads.

The trail wasn't cold. It was non-fucking-existent. For 578 days, Reagan had nothing to fight, nothing to kill. She was forced to accept it, forced to believe it was some random fucking thing, that Amy had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which, really, left her with only one conclusion.

It was her. It was  _all_  her. Her fault. Her responsibility.

Her karma.

And on day 578, Reagan found out. She wasn't entirely wrong.

* * *

The walk from the bar to the cemetery - a walk Reagan has memorized every fucking step of - is never as long as she wants it to be.

It's long enough -  _just_  - for her to sober up a little. And that leads to thinking and that leads to remembering where she's going and why. But it's  _not_  long enough, not by half, for those thoughts to turn to  _second_  thoughts, the kind that could force her to come to her senses and turn around.

So she always ends up getting there, even when she doesn't really want to

(which is  _always_ )

and she always ends up there just as her buzz is starting to fade, just as the warmth of the liquor flowing through her - the only thing that gives her the strength to face that fucking rock in the ground - starts to chill.

It isn't that she can't deal with Amy being dead.

(it's not  _just_  that.)

It's that fucking rock. It's the patch of grass she sits on. It's knowing that everything she ever knew of Amy - her hands, her skin, her lips, her  _heart_  - is buried in a box under that grass and all that dirt, rotting away, slowly dissolving into nothing and what she's left with

( _nothing_ )

is… well… Reagan doesn't know  _what_  the fuck it is.

It's a soul. That's what they call it. But Reagan's seen too much and killed too much and watched too many good people die

(even before Amy, before the  _best_  of them)

that she isn't sure she can even believe there is such a thing as a soul.

You try killing demons and vampires and werewolves and trolls

(especially the trolls)

and see if you don't have some doubts about heaven.

Hell? That shit's real.

Reagan's living in it every day and, lately, she's doing it alone.

She hasn't talked to Liam since their night in the storage room, since she supposedly didn't hear him call Karma.

It's not that she's avoiding him

(sending his calls to voicemail, not listening to the voicemail, and deleting his texts isn't avoidance)

but she can't face him - she can barely face herself - after…

The nameless, faceless, couldn't remember them in the morning girls were one thing.

She was drunk. She was in pain. She needed… something - not that she ever got it from those girls - but that's so not the fucking point. There were excuses, there were mitigating circumstances, there was enough alcohol to blind her

(in some cases, literally)

but none of that, not a single fucking bit of it, was true that night. Reagan was stone fucking sober and she knew - she fucking  _knew_  - what she was doing.

Betraying Amy.

It wasn't enough that she got her wife killed, no, Reagan had to go and piss on her memory -  _their_  memory

( _there are no… boyfriends…. around me… right now)_

and Reagan just can't deal with Liam telling her that it's OK, that it isn't as bad as she thinks, that she didn't do anything wrong

(which, given that he thinks she's fucked up enough to call in the werewolf ex-wife cavalry, is just so much bullshit)

and she really -  _really_  - can't deal with Karma. Which is fine, since she doubts she's ever going to see her again and - believe it or not - that's enough to make her start crying again.

The tears - and the scotch - are in her eyes - so Reagan almost doesn't see her - the figure slumped over Amy's gravestone, until she's practically on top of her.

Later, she'll blame the tears

(and the scotch)

for dulling her edges, for burying her hunter instincts, for the way she fumbles going for the knife tucked inside her jacket, for the way it slips from her fingers and drops to the ground. Reagan takes one staggering step, trying - as best she can - to reach for the blade in the grass and keep her eyes on whoever -  _whatever_  - is on her wife's stone.

It's a drunk, probably. A too drunk to make it all the way home asshole who picked the wrong stone to pass out on. The wrong stone on the wrong night in the wrong fucking life -

"Reagan?"

The voice -  _her_  voice - is weak and shallow but still unmistakably her.

"Karma?"

The figure -  _Karma_  - lurches off the stone and Reagan barely has time to brace herself before the redhead crashes into her, driving them both into the ground and into the faint strip of light from the one street lamp at the cemetery's gates.

It doesn't matter how drunk Reagan still is or isn't. The sight of Karma's face beneath the hood of her jacket sobers her in a hurry.

Karma is a mess of bruises and cuts and slashes and blood and any number of wounds her werewolf constitution  _should_ have healed. And then there's her eyes. One is swollen shut - and looking at the other, Reagan thinks that might be a small mercy - the other has clearly been gouged and poked and damn near pried loose and it's amazing that Karma can see at all, much less recognize Reagan in the dark.

"Rea...gan…"

Reagan shifts slightly against the ground, pulling Karma more solidly on top of her, supporting the younger woman's body with her legs as gently as she can

(not gently enough to keep Karma from moaning and trying to say her name again)

and she cradles Karma's head in her hands. "Shhh… don't try to talk, OK. I'm going to call my father and he can bring help -"

Karma ignores her and fumbles briefly in the dark, grasping for and eventually finding Reagan's hand and shoving something into it.

"Found… her…"

Karma's head drops into Reagan's lap and the older woman's hand finds her neck and… yes… there's still a pulse.

(Thank God)

Reagan pulls her cell from her jacket, dialing her father's number and glancing down at her hand, at whatever Karma was so insistent on giving her.

_Found her. She said found her. Or ''founder'?_

Reagan unfolds the paper as she waits for her father to pick up.

One word.

 _Who the fuck_ , Reagan wonders,  _is 'Silas'?_

* * *

_Styria, Austria_

Danny sticks her head in the door without knocking

(and what else is new?)

and clears her throat to get Carmilla's attention. "They're here," she says. "The latest bunch of cast-offs."

Carmilla sighs, dropping her book into her lap. She wasn't reading it - not really - mostly just staring at the same page over and over again, trying her level best not to fixate on the fact that Laura and LaF were at least an hour overdue for check in, ignoring that Perry has spent most of that hour in and out of the room in some kind of stress-induced cleaning binge, and trying not to think of the impending arrival of the 'cast-offs'.

"Can't we come up with something better to call them?" she asks. 'Cast-offs' has always made her think of some poor, street urchin French children, orphaned by the revolution, yet constantly upbeat enough to sing all about their hardships.

(She really needs to update Laura's Netflix queue.  _Dr. Who_  was bad enough. The movie musicals have got to go.)

Danny shrugs as she steps fully into the room. "LaF suggested calling them 'cannon fodder'."

Carmilla arches an eyebrow, almost afraid to ask. "Cannon fodder?"

Danny nods, settling down on the edge of Laura's bed. "Yup. Because they're convinced that all these girls will, eventually, go all pod-people and obey the Dean's telepathic orders to attack us, forcing us to use up all our defenses and weapons and leave us ripe for the Dean's plucking."

Yup. Carmilla wishes she hadn't asked.

"Remind me again why I haven't locked them away in some lab somewhere and lost the key?"

"Laura," Danny says.

Right. The reason Carmilla does anything and everything at least according to everyone else.

"How many do we have this time?" she asks Danny as she stands, tugging her shirt down, trying in vain to smooth out the wrinkles and look somewhat leader like.

(As if  _that_  would ever happen.)

"Just four," Danny says, "The last round of disappearances was double that so it seems like the Dean might be getting somewhat better at selecting girls that meet her requirements."

Whatever the hell  _those_ are.

Carmilla takes a deep breath - more for psychological effect than actual need - and steels herself. "OK," she says, "bring them in."

This is the part of this that she hates

(yeah, like it's the  _only_  part)

and it's the part that Laura is so much better at.  _She_  can actually look at the girls, can actually remember their names, can actually talk to them and listen to them and appreciate that they're real people and not just failed experiments that the Dean has rejected and sent back out into the world with no memory beyond their own names.

Laura  _sees_  them, sees them as people, not just as so much…

cannon fodder.

That's it. As soon as they get back, LaF is getting locked up in some cozy little lab with all the residual brain goop and parasite remnants they've got and they're not coming out until Carmilla stops thinking like them.

And maybe not even then.

Danny leads the girls into the room like a parade of beauty queens making their way across the stage posing and preening for Carmilla's approval.

She barely hears their names, barely registers them as individuals

_Betty_ _Spielsdorf_

They're all just one more blonde, one more brunette, one more frizzy haired young thing who probably didn't have much more of a brain  _before_  the Dean took her than she does now.

_Sarah Jane_

Carmilla actually feels bad - a little - about it. She knows none of these girls asked for this, none of them volunteered for the Dean to do… whatever the hell she did to them.

_Elsie_

But there are so many better things Carmilla - and Danny and Laura and even the ginger twins - could be doing right now, so many different and more important and far more effective ways they could be fighting against the Dean. Ways that involve so much less glad-handing and polite smiling and phony upbeat optimism and much more killing.

Danny goes silent in the doorway and Carmilla glances over, smiling as best she can at the three girls standing in her dorm room.

"I thought you said there were four?"

Danny nods. "Sorry," she says. "It seems cast-off number four has gotten a little distracted by Perry… hang on."

The tall redhead disappears down the hall, leaving Carmilla alone with the three girls and a seemingly unbreakable silence that feels not unlike being trapped underground in a coffin with no one to talk to but yourself.

The door pops back open and cast-off number four comes in, Danny right on her heels, but Carmilla doesn't hear Danny's apologies or mutterings about Perry and her disinfectant and just what the hell is she cleaning  _all the time_.

Carmilla doesn't hear anything - or  _see_  anything - other than number four. Because, really, she's pretty sure that she's lost her mind

(and maybe she really is locked in coffin somewhere and this is her mind slowly dying without blood)

because there's no way, no fucking way at all, that number four is standing there or - more accurately - that  _she's_  standing there, because no, not possible, not even a little fucking bit.

"You…"

It's all Carmilla can get out and she knows - even without looking - that Danny is staring at her and starting to freak because that's Danny's biggest worry, that Carmilla will snap and lose her mind and start doing, you know,  _vampire_  shit, when Laura isn't around to reign her in.

But Carmilla doesn't't care. Because right now? She knows they have a  _much_  bigger problem.

Number fucking four. The last cast-off, the one who doesn't seem to register, even a little bit, the sheer panic - the absofuckinglute terror - on Carmilla's face as she steps forward, smiling and somewhat shy and holds out a hand.

"Hi," she says. "I'm Amy."


	2. Chapter 2

**_Previously : Reagan's a hunter, Karma is a werewolf and Amy's dead. Except she's not, and she's somehow appeared at Silas University with no memory and rescued by a very confused Carmilla._ **

 

LaFontaine calls it 'the lightning round', which is about the dumbest thing Carmilla has ever heard, but she has to admit - it  _works_. At least sometimes and, when it comes to anything they can do to fight her demon mother, the Dean, she'll take all the sometimes she can get.

Sometimes, she knows, 'sometimes' is as good as you're gonna get.

LaF got the idea from one of their psych classes, most likely 'abnormal' because, let's be real, there's no other kind of psych at Silas. According to LaF (or her teacher or some theorist somewhere who Carmilla's never heard of), it's supposed to help with reconnecting or reordering or re-some-fucking-thing-or-another synapses in the brain. Carmilla's not sure how word association - because that's really all it is - is supposed to help.

"It lures your subconscious - and whatever boogie men or women you've got hiding in there - out into the open," LaF explained to her once. They were trying to convince Carmilla to try it.

Carm's quite happy with her boogie men, women, and monsters staying right where they are.

It's pretty simple - and Carmilla does appreciate simplicity - and seems fairly harmless. The questioner - always Danny or Laura (the  _nice_ ones) - says a word and whichever one of the cast-offs they're talking to says the first thing that pops into her mind. Over time, they've developed a list of standard questions, the words most likely to get a response that  _might_  help them figure out what the Dean, Lilita, is up to.

Carmilla's repeated suggestions that maybe they'd be better off  _not_  knowing and beating a very hasty retreat to wherever isn't ground zero for her mother's demonic undertakings have been , as a matter of course, ignored.

Which is fine, really. She talks a good game but they all - or at least Laura - know she doesn't mean it. Carmilla was here first, before any of them, hiding in the bowels of Styria, lurking in the shadows, waiting for her mother to make a move. Maybe Carmilla didn't ever expect that move to be becoming University Dean or kidnapping seemingly random girls, but that doesn't change anything.

She's stopped her mother before. Maybe she can't kill her - maybe she doesn't even know how - but she can fuck with her. Mess up her plans. Chain her in a box and bury her at the bottom of the ocean.

It's all temporary. Stop gap measures. But sometimes, Carmilla has realized in her over three hundred years, stop gap is all you've got.

Hence, the lightning round.

So far, it hasn't given them much to go on. Two of the girls in the first batch remembered their full names. A second batcher remembered that she had a sister who had also gone missing

(but not returned)

and two of the girls in this most recent batch have remembered some as well. Betty remembered that her father is a general, though whether that's military or practitioner she couldn't say. And Sarah Jane remembered that she has a very…  _intense_ … crush on Kirsch.

Carmilla almost wishes they could help her forget  _that_  again.

Now, it's Amy's turn in the hotseat. Normally, Carmilla leaves this - and most of the touchy, feely, kumbaya hocus pocus shit - to Danny and Laura, even as Laura tries - every damn time - to get her to stay.

"It's important," she says. "These girls are frightened. They've been through something so horrible they can't even remember it. They need to see that someone powerful is on their side."

There's logic to that, Carmilla knows, but she also knows it's so very very flawed.

She's not on  _their_  side, not really, not unless you go by the old 'enemy of my enemy is my friend adage - which is total bullshit, anyway - and they don't  _know_  that the cast-offs went through anything horrible, and none of them, not a one, knows how powerful she is.

For that, they'd have to know  _what_ she is. And that, they all agree, is anything but a good idea.

So, if this were a normal situation, Carmilla would be back in her room, reading a book, taking a nap, drinking some blood. She'd be doing anything but leaning up against the door to the dorm's common room, the usual spot for the lightning round, nice and open and where all the girls can watch.

"It makes them feel less alone that way," Danny said once and even Carmilla could see the sense in that.

But  _this_  is not a normal situation, not even remotely. Laura and LaF are still not back - closing in on two hours late now - so they're shorthanded to begin with. Carmilla's taken up LaF's usual second chair spot, assigned to watch and listen and see if she can spot anything - a change in body language, a facial reaction, even the tiniest twitch - something that might signal their questioning is getting somewhere.

She's doing a shitty job of it so far.

She barely paid attention through the first three girls, her eyes and ears and mind all focused entirely on Amy - Amy who can't be here, Amy who shouldn't be here, Amy who's going to bring the wrath of hell down on all of them  _just_  for being here…

Amy, hasn't done a single thing but sit and watch and, occasionally, smile at one of the other cast-offs.

Which only makes Carmilla worry more.

Danny explains the rules to Amy, just as she did for the first three girls. Carmilla can't help noticing the way Amy's fighting to keep from rolling her eyes at the simple way Danny's talking to her, like she's a fourth grader.

"She was abducted, Xena, not lobotomized," Carmilla snaps. "I think she knows what to do."

Danny glares at her but settles back in her chair and gets the show, as it were, on the road, starting slow as she always does, letting Amy get into the rhythm of the back and forth. LaF says that loosens up the mind so that things  _flow,_ all instinct and no thought.

Danny works through the usual suspects and Amy's answers seem fine, if not a little boring.

Food.  _Doughnuts._

Home.  _Heart_.

Family.  _Love._

Danny ups the ante a little - not a moment too soon for Carmilla - as Amy seems to be settling into a groove. She moves from general stuff - calibrating the mechanism, LaF calls it - to things that might trigger some responses about who took her or what they did.

Kidnapping.  _Ransom_.

Monsters.  _Real._

Carmilla perks up. It's the first sign any of the cast-offs have ever given that they believe in the big bad things under their beds.

Dean.  _Winchester_.

Danny tries, mostly unsuccessfully, to bite back a laugh. Carmilla doesn't get it.

Vampires.  _Dracula_.

Carmilla sighs. Every fucking time, it's the same thing. Dracula.

Overrated hack.

Danny moves into the real  _lightning_  portion of things, one rapidfire word after another, repeating Amy's answers back at her, using her own words to get deeper into her mind.

You.  _Amy._

Amy.  _Karma._

Danny looks at Amy funny, like it makes no sense, but Carmilla knows it makes all the sense in the world.

Karma.  _Love._

Love.

Love.

Danny tries one last time.

Love.

_Reagan_.

Danny pauses again, just for a beat. This is - possibly - the first time they've ever gotten a truly personal response. She glances, hopefully, at Carmilla, but the vampire's eyes are locked on Amy and she looks, at least to Danny, almost as terrified as some of the cast-offs when they've found them.

Danny soldiers on.

Reagan.

Amy turns in the chair, her entire body shifting -  _aiming_  - at Carmilla. There's something in her eyes, a flicker in her gaze, just for a moment, the slightest tilt of her head as she speaks.

_Santa._

The accent is all wrong - like Amy's never spoken Spanish in her life - and Danny seems confused, like the blonde is talking about Father fucking Christmas, but Carmilla doesn't need an accent. She doesn't need sudden fluency or perfect enunciation.

It's all right there, if she can see it. It's in the way Amy's eyes are traveling down her body, making tiny little stops along the way, a pattern Carmila should know, she should recognize.

The throat, right where the pulse point  _should_ be.

Just below her chest. Up and under the ribs.

Her stomach. Gut shot.

If Carmilla hadn't been caught so off guard, hadn't been so thrown by the word, she would have seen it. She would have spotted the pattern in time, would have recognized it for what it was.

The killing blows.

She hears Danny repeat the word back to Amy, but it's like Danny's underwater and it's nothing but burbles and gurgles and air rushing out, escaping and never coming back.

Santa.

_Muerte_.

Carmilla's just a second too late, her reaction just a half a beat off as Amy lunges for her, one hand grabbing the collar of Carmilla's shirt to hold in her place as the other hand snatches the pencil from Danny, swinging it wildly, her aim inexpert and hesitant - her eyes anything but - and Carmilla thinks, for just a moment, that she's really fucked up this time.

Amy's slight hesitation is what gives Danny a chance to kick the table, slamming it into the blonde before she can actually connect with the pencil, knocking her back into the wall. Amy's up, almost inhumanely fast, but Danny strides forward, one quick right to the jaw sending the older girl tumbling back down, out cold for the moment.

Danny stands over Amy's unconscious form, the other girls huddling at the end of the room, a couple of them crying.

"What the hell was  _that_?" she asks Carmilla, not even bothering to clarify if she means Amy's answers or the attack.

Carmilla looks down the length of the room at the terrified cast-offs, Betty standing at the front, holding out a plastic spork like a weapon.

"Get them out of here," she says to Danny. " _All_  of them. Tie Amy up or duct tape her or something. Just get them out of here and somewhere safe."

Safe.

Carmilla's pretty sure they're just about out of places like that.

Danny nods. "But what about -"

Carmilla holds a hand up and, remarkably, Danny grows silent. "Send Kirsch and Mel and whoever else you can scrounge up our to find Laura and the bio major. Find them and bring them back. Kill anything that gets in the way."

Danny nods, again, afraid to do much else. "What are you going to do?"

Carmilla bends down and brushes Amy's hair back out of her face. There's blood on her lip and a bruise already forming on her jaw.

She doubts it's the first time Amy's been bloodied. Probably not the worst either. The girl was married to Reagan - to Santa Muerte herself.

Getting your ass kicked comes with the territory.

"Carmilla?" Danny asks, confused at how tender Carmilla is being, especially with someone who just tried to kill her.

The vampire heads for the door, tapping out a text message on her phone. "I'm going to see a man about a saint."

* * *

They meet, in of all places, a church.

It was Will's idea. It's the last place  _she'd_  look, the last place she'd think to find two of her wayward children conspiring against her.

Carmilla isn't sure what they're doing is, technically, conspiring. Will's too on the fence for that, never outright helping her, not in ways that would actually make Mother mad. He may not be as deliberately or intentionally evil as Lilita, but he's not quite at the 'conspiring' level.

And she thinks he's out of his mind - even moreso than usual - if he thinks their mother doesn't know every single time they talk. She knows Will hasn't got Lilita fooled at all, not even a tiny bit, and if he was half as dangerous to her as he claims to be?

Mommy dearest would have him drawn, quartered, and then stitched back together so she could do it again.

Will knows only what Lilita lets him know, reveals only what she wants him to. And Carmilla knows that one day her brother is going to outlive his usefulness to their mother - or to  _her_  - and he'll have no choice but to pick a side for real.

And when he does, one of the women he loves so dearly is going to kill him.

Right now, Carmilla's thinking that's going to be her because not telling her about this? Not telling her about Amy, not warning her that their mother was making this big a move and dragging their fucking past into the light of a Silas day?

_That's_  picking a side. And it isn't hers.

She waits for him in the church, her anger barely contained. If she was sure - really, absolutely  _sure_ \- that he'd been holding out on her, Carmilla knows it wouldn't have been a text message and a 'meet me. usual spot'.

If she was sure, she'd have walked into his dorm room, hugged him, told him she loves him - somehow, someway, she really does - and cut off his fucking head.

But a part of her - the part her mother would laugh at, would call the last little bit of humanity rotting her away from the inside - still has hope. She still thinks, maybe, that Will doesn't know, that he'll be as surprised as she was, that maybe - just maybe - this will be the tipping point.

Carmilla knows Will always loved Reagan. More than he ever loved her or their mother. So, maybe this will finally get him to jump off the fucking fence and pick a side.

He comes in through the back door as he always does, refusing to just appear in a puff of smoke and a flash of light. Will's always prefered the grand entrance, announcing his presence like he's Napoleon back from conquering some barbarians.

(Carmilla knew Napoleon. Will could  _so_  take him.)

She's counting on it, actually - his stubborn consistency, his refusal to change it up. She doesn't really need the advantage of surprise, but it'll make it easier.

Will's a good liar , a very good liar. Except when he's scared. If Carmilla wants the truth, she knows the quickest way to it is to put the fear of death into him.

Meeting him just inside the doorway, her hand wrapping around his throat as she slams him into the wall seems to do the trick.

"What the fuck, Kitty?"

She hates the nickname, has hated it every day for two hundred years, and it only makes her grip tighter. He struggles against her, but she's stronger - she always has been - and he can't break free. She's not squeezing hard enough to break anything - not yet - but a little more pressure and Will stops squirming, his eyes darting back and forth around the room.

He's getting it.

He's in fucking trouble.

Carmilla leans her shoulder against the wall next to him, her face pressed against his. "You didn't warn me," she says, not even bothering to snarl or flash her fangs. Her soft, calm, and totally fucking lethal tone is far more effective.

"Warn you about what?" Will digs his fingers into her hand, trying to pry her grip loose but getting nowhere. It's the story of Will's life. His death gave him so much he never had when he was alive. Purpose. A family of sorts. Strength. Power.

But not a single damn clue how to use it.

"We rescued more girls," Carmilla says, leaning closer, tilting her head in and out of his vision, and every time she's out of sight, she can feel him tense under her fingers. "Four of them. Nothing special, really. Though there was this one interesting one. An American."

Her tone's light. Carefree. Like they're chatting about the weather.

It's the scariest thing Will's ever heard.

"She's a blonde," Carmilla says. "Very pretty. Did I mention she's American? From Texas, actually." She digs her fingers in a little harder. " _Austin_ , to be exact." Her fingers break his skin, leaving little gashes that heal almost as soon as she makes them, but every squeeze rips them open again.

It won't do any permanent damage. But it hurts like fucking hell.

"So?" Will asks -  _whines_  - as his feel kick, trying to find some purchase on the wall, some way to push off, some leverage so he can break her grip.

"She remembers her name," Carmilla says, her fingers tightening once again around his throat and he stills. "Amy," she says, "Her name is  _Amy_."

At first, there's nothing. Nothing but fear and pain and confusion - none of which is unusual for Will - but then Carmilla sees it. She can watch it sink in, watch the words pinball around his head and he slowly gets it.

"No," he says, shaking his head as best he can. "You're wrong. There's no way…"

Carmilla's known Will for over two hundred years. She knows his cowardice, his failings, she knows he'll be loyal to whoever won't kill him. She knows when he's lying - which is most of the time - but she also knows when, every once in a while, he's telling the truth.

Like now.

Carmilla lets him go, his feet landing back on the floor with a thud as he clutches at his throat and the already healed over wounds. "Apparently," she says, "there  _is_  a way. Because right now, Amy Raudenfeld-Solis is tied up in my dorm room with no clue who - or what - she is."

Will slumps against the nearest pew, his mind racing. "You don't understand," he says. "It can't be. Not like 'I can't believe mother would do this', can't be. It fucking  _can't_ be." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, tapping the screen frantically. "Here," he says, finally, handing her the phone.

Carmilla takes it and glances down at the screen, immediately drawn to the picture of Amy - smiling and happy and full of life - and then the headline.

_Austin teacher dead at twenty-eight_.

Dead.

Amy's dead.

Well… that's a wrinkle.

"Are you sure it's her?" Will asks.

Carmilla thinks about the girl back at her dorm. About her smile, the same one as in the picture. About the way she followed the pattern, the one Carmilla taught Reagan years ago

(neck) (under the ribs) (gut shot)

about how she said Karma's name  _and_  Reagan's.

About  _Santa Muerte_.

"Yeah," she says, staring down at the picture. "I'm sure."

Will shakes his head, still incredulous. "How?" he asks. "She's been dead for like a year and a half."

Carmilla's eyes snap up. A year and a…

_No._

_No fucking…_

She looks back down at the phone, at the date. She does the math in her head, even though she doesn't really have to.

578.

Amy died 578 days ago tonight.

Exactly the number of days Lilita spent at the bottom of the Pacific thanks to Carmilla and some enchanted chains.

"What the hell is she doing?" Carmilla mutters, mostly to herself.

"I don't know," Will says, a distinct ripple of fear running through his voice. "She doesn't tell me much anymore," he says. "She's got minions for everything. Some human and some… there's demons, Carm. Some of them I don't even know  _what_  they are. And I don't want to."

None of it makes sense. Freezing Will out. Kidnapping girls and letting them go. Using new 'hired help' instead of her old stand-bys.

Bringing Amy back from the dead.

"Why bring Amy into this at all?" she asks. " _I_ was the one who chained her up. I dumped her at the bottom of the ocean. Why go through all the work to get Amy here…"

Carmilla trails off as she and Will make eye contact, the answer so fucking obvious to both of them.

Reagan.

"It's the only thing that makes sense," Will says. "I don't know why, but mother wants Reagan… she wants the family back together. And this is the perfect way to do it."

Carmilla nods. He's right. Amy's alive. Reagan's  _wife_ is alive. And sooner or later - probably sooner if Lilita has anything do with it - Reagan will find out.

And then it's only a matter of time before Santa Muerte, Carmilla's baby sister herself, comes hunting.

* * *

_Austin_

Reagan hopes she's wrong. She  _prays_. And she doesn't pray often. In fact, she's pretty sure she hasn't prayed even once in the last 578 days. Mostly, she's been too drunk, too sad, too lost to even think about it.

But, when she has? She's pretty sure it would be pointless.

Why pray when no one is listening?

But tonight, as she takes cover behind the biggest tree - the closest one to Amy's grave and Karma's unconscious body - Reagan prays that she's wrong, that she's underestimating her father and brother. That maybe the alcohol and adrenaline and shock of seeing Karma again has messed her judgement up even more than usual.

Martin and Glenn agreed to come. They said they'd bring her truck and help her get Karma somewhere safe. It wasn't until after she hung up that the fog in her brain cleared enough and Reagan remembered.

The last time they saw Karma, Martin and Glenn tried to kill her.

Granted, she was a werewolf at the time, but still...

But tonight, everything happened so fast, she hadn't had time to think, to reason, to make the best choice. She'd made the obvious choice and now… well… now she was realizing what she'd done.

She'd called a pair of hunters, two of the best, to help save a beaten and wounded werewolf, one who was her friend, her family even.

But that hadn't stopped Martin and Glenn before.

She hasn't been hunting with them since Amy died and - without her - her father and brother have lost what wiggle room there ever was in their judgment. They had seen Amy's body, they had seen what had happened to the woman they considered a sister, a daughter.

Reagan couldn't really blame them for being a little less judge and jury and more executioner.

But this is different. This is Karma.  _She_ knows it's different. She's just not sure they do.

So she hides, waiting behind the tree - lousy cover, but it's all she's got - and waits and rationalizes that she's just being careful, just being cautious.

Reagan watches through the branches as the two figures approach from the far end of the lot, stagger-spaced, spread wide to avoid bunching so if one of them gets taken, the other's still standing. Martin taught them that, before it was hunting, when it was survival, when he showed them and Carmilla and Will what they'd need to know in a fight.

He taught them a lot. All of them.

But then he'd taught Reagan and Glenn how to run and that was the end of that.

Reagan slows her breathing, evening herself out as she watches the closer figure - Glenn - reach Karma. Martin's hanging back, probably with gun drawn, waiting and watching in the dark, covering their escape. Glenn bends down, nudging Karma gently.

"She's out," he whispers. "No sign of Reagan."

Martin responds from a distance, his words lost to her, but she doesn't need to hear them to know what he said, not when Glenn pulls his knife - the silver one Martin gave him the night they escaped - flipping it around, hilt in his hand, ready to strike.

Glenn's younger and bigger - always has been - but he's slower and no matter how much he trains and practices, his reaction time is always off, he's always a second late. It's never enough to get him killed, but he's got more scars than he should and Reagan's perfectly fine with giving him another one.

Her knife catches him in the wrist, slicing through the skin before it clatters off the grave marker behind him. It doesn't do any real damage, not even enough of a wound to make him drop his own blade, but it startles him, and his head jerks up, distracted just enough for Reagan to cross the few short feet between them, her shoulder lowered and plunging into his abdomen, her speed and leverage giving her everything she needs to drive him back and take him to the ground.

She has his knife - and hers - in her grip before Glenn can rebound and she squares herself between him

(and Martin's gun, somewhere out in the dark)

and Karma.

"What the fuck, Rea?" Glenn tries to scramble to his feet but the ground is soft and he slips, catching himself on the tombstone behind him.

"I called you for  _help_ ," she says. "Asked you to bring my truck, help me get her somewhere safe. I didn't ask you to come try and kill her."

Martin steps forward, the gun - a shotgun so clearly he's not taking any chances - raised, pointing down at an angle, at Karma's body. Reagan shifts her stance, just enough so he'll have to shoot through her leg if he wants to try it.

"Reagan, you know we have to do this," he says. "We're hunters. She's a wolf. That's how this works."

There was a time when it wasn't that cut and dried and even if it had been, they might have been on the other side. But that's not now. And now, all that matters is Karma.

"She was Amy's best friend," Reagan says. "And that makes her mine. Mine to protect, mine to help, mine to love."

The implication is clear. Mine. Not yours. Not yours to kill.

Glenn finally finds his feet again, but makes no move toward her. He's not stupid enough to challenge Reagan unarmed. "Yours?" he asks. "She's a werewolf, Reagan. She's a fucking monster."

Reagan hears the snap of a branch as Martin steps forward, trying to get a better angle, but she knows he'll shoot even if he doesn't get one, he won't think twice about wounding her if it kills Karma.

She steps back, a single pace closer to Karma and glares into the dark. Glenn sees it first, the glow, the light whipping back and forth in her eyes and then Martin spots it, the way she shimmers in the dark, every muscle - every one bigger than it should be - vibrating under her skin, her fingers lengthening, talons closing around the handles of the knives.

"She  _is_ a monster, Glenn," Reagan says, the words slipping off the sharp tips of fangs. "But just in case you forgot?"

The knives fly from her hand, pinpoint accurate, cutting down her father and her brother where they stand.

"So am I."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exploring Reagan's history with Carmilla and her family including how she came to be a monster. Oh... and a few people die. One that might matter more than the others.

__

_France, 1806_

The first time she shifts, Reagan is just nine years old.

She's living in France, a far cry from the small Mexican town she was born in. They're holed up in a run down chalet deep in the country, far removed from most anyone else, save for a tiny village a few miles north. It's a cliche in every way, the kind of thing she'd read about in the books Carmilla brings her, but Martin says it's the only thing that keeps them safe. Carmilla and Will can hunt the woods and Lilita can stay protected, hidden away in the chalet, slowly regaining her strength.

Reagan doesn't know what happened to the older woman, only that she's weak - or so Martin and Carmilla say - and that, they tell her, makes her more dangerous than ever, even more than when she's at the height of her not inconsiderable powers.

"She's got nothing to do," Martin says, "but plan and plot."

And even at nine, Reagan is smart enough to gather that a planning Lilita doesn't end well. Not for anyone.

They've been there nine months, the longest they've stayed anywhere since Reagan became part of the 'family'. That's what Lilita calls them. Family.

Reagan asked her once, in one of the rare moments they were in the same room, where her  _real_  family, her mother and her father, were.

" _I_ am your mother," Lilita said, her tone brooking no disagreements. "And  _we_  are your family. Your blood is our blood, child, and blood must  _always_  be served."

It's not that simple, Martin tells her later. Yes, they are blood. Carmilla and Will and Lilita's blood flows through Reagan's veins - quite literally - but that doesn't make anyone family, not really.

"Blood by birth," Martin says, simply. "Family by choice."

Reagan clings to that, holds tight to that idea of choice and her love for the older man who is like a father to her. She grasps at it when, at only nine years old, she finds herself chained to the wall of a dark and dank chalet cellar, Lilita's eyes burning through her and the pain of a thousand

(maybe more)

cuts slices through her flesh, like a bloodletting.

She tries so very hard. She clings to it with everything she has as the pain overwhelms her and all she can hear is Lilita's voice in her head.

_Family. Family. Family._

It's the last thing Reagan hears, the last thing she  _thinks_ , the last word echoing back and forth in her mind before it all becomes too much and her world goes dark.

The year is 1806. And Reagan is just nine years old.

And the end of all is near.

* * *

_Austin, Now_

The last time Reagan shifted was 576 days ago, two days after her wife died in the woods.

She didn't want to, she'd never wanted to shift again. It had been so long, so many years, since she had let it come, since she had  _not_  fought the change and had just let it come, let it roll through her and wash her away

(because  _that_ , above all else, was what it did - wash her  _away_ )

that she'd almost forgotten how. It was easier like that. Easier to make herself forget. But the pain was so fresh, so unrelenting, so burning that it just became too much and remembering became all too easy.

In the end, it was Farrah that pushed her over the edge.

Reagan never knew her mother - her  _real_  mother - the woman who gave birth to her dead at the same hands that brought Reagan into the world, and for years

(too many fucking years)

Lilita had been all she had, the closest thing she had to a mother. But that was over decades ago and Reagan had been alone ever since.

Until Amy. Until Farrah. Until a Republican leaning former Texas beauty queen opened her heart and her home and welcomed her into the family as completely as if she'd been born to it.

When she and Amy got married, Karma and Lauren stood up for Amy. Reagan had Glenn, but he didn't exactly scream 'best man' and certainly not 'maid of honor'. So, Farrah stood beside her, holding her bouquet and the rings and trying her damndest not to let her sniffles

(her  _sobs_ )

be louder than their vows.

Reagan loved Martin and would always be grateful to him for all that he'd done for her. But that was the moment, when she stood between Amy and Farrah and said those words

_wherever you go, I'll never be far_

_that_  was the moment Reagan understood what Martin had told her all those years ago.

Blood by birth. Family by  _choice_.

And then, 576 days ago, that family splintered and broke and Reagan couldn't take it anymore.

Farrah hadn't meant what she said, Reagan knew that. She knew Amy's mother loved her like she was her own. But staring down at Amy's body, so peaceful, so still, the casket lining so fucking pink

(like Amy would've been caught dead in  _pink_ )

and Farrah was beside herself, she was lost. No parent should ever have to bury a child. It's wrong, it's unnatural - and Reagan  _knew_  from unnatural - and Farrah just couldn't hold it back, she just couldn't.

"It should have been you."

Only Reagan and Lauren were close enough to hear it and from Farrah's gasp and the way her hand shot to her mouth and the agony in her eyes and the way she just kept slowly shaking her head… Reagan knew she didn't mean it. It was just the pained utterance of a grieving mother who needed someone to lash out at, someone to make hurt in even the tiniest, most miniscule fraction of the way she was.

It didn't bother Reagan that Farrah said it.

It bothered her that it was true.

Reagan held it together for the rest of the wake, but barely. She could feel it coming, could feel the shift barrelling down the tracks, steamrolling toward her. She was used to that. In times of pain and stress and fear

(the everyday life of a hunter)

it happened. Reagan was used to the oncoming train, she felt it every day of her life. But she was even more used to slamming on the brakes, to grinding that train's gears to a halt, her humanity claiming one more victory over the... other.

As she staggered home from the wake - Farrah's desperate apologies still ringing in her ears - Reagan reached for those brakes again, did everything she could to focus her mind on staying right there, in the moment, on staying  _her_.

_It should have been you_

Focus be damned.

She let it wash over her and screamed as it happened, as her bones and muscles and mind warped and turned and shifted, Reagan slipping away, leaving nothing but Santa Muerte in her place. And it  _hurt_. It hurt so fucking much, like every bit of her was being flipped inside out and left there, exposed and raw, hot Texas air racing across every nerve.

Reagan let it. She let the pain come because it was blinding and numbing and it left her shaking and shuddering in the dark, but it let her forget the  _real_  pain.

Until she came back, until she shifted again, Reagan returning and Santa Muerte crawling back in the hole Reagan had sworn she'd never let her out of again. And then it hurt even more.

Kind of like now.

Reagan's holding onto her rock

(Amy)

quite literally, her arms wrapped around her wife's tombstone as her body shifts back, fighting against every step of the way. That's what Santa Muerte does, the way she kicks and claws and scratches and refuses to ever go fucking quietly, always trying to force it, trying to stay in whatever fucked up monstrous form she's taken this time

(never the same one twice, always something new, always something different and grotesque, always some evil fucking thing Reagan would gladly stake on a hunt)

and Reagan's mind is feverish and lost, torn between betrayal and anger at Martin and Glenn, fear for Karma, and all the pain she's been numbing

( _trying_  to)

for a year and a half.

She crumples against the stone, refusing to let loose the scream tearing at her throat. She can't. Not with Glenn and Martin still there, in the dark, down but not dead. Reagan grips the gravemarker and the talons - and  _that_  was a new wrinkle - dig into the stone, leaving jagged grooves ripped into the marble. She focuses, reading Amy's name over and over and over again, centering her mind on here and now and not on falling to the ground and letting the darkness swimming at the bottom of her eyes take her over.

She doesn't have time for that.  _Karma_  doesn't have time for that. Glenn and Martin won't be down forever, not unless she finishes the job

(and she can't)

(she just fucking  _can't_ )

so she uses the stone for leverage, driving herself to her feet, stumbling a little as she finds her footing in the dark.

"Reagan."

Martin's voice cuts through the night and Reagan's grateful for the dark, if only so he can't see her flinch.

* * *

_France, 1806_

When she comes to, Reagan finds herself still chained to the wall in the chalet cellar, Carmilla, Will, and Lilita watching her from a distance.

That's how they always are - distant, removed, watching from afar - never coming close, not even when she's chained.

Reagan won't look at them, her head bowed, refusing to meet their eyes. Not the ones that look at her like she's an experiment

(Lilita)

or food

(Will)

or with something Reagan thinks is pity

(Carmilla)

but she knows it can't be  _that_ , because if it was - if  _any_  of them were capable of something even approximating real emotion - she wouldn't be chained to a fucking wall.

And so she tries not to look at them so they can't see the fear and loneliness in her eyes, so they'll never realize how desperately she craves even their cold dead touch. She hates them so so many things, but nothing more than that. Nothing more than the way they've made her lost for something as simple as a moment's worth of human contact.

She hates them - all of them - but maybe Carmilla most of all. Her 'sister' as Lilita calls her, the one who teases her, who gives her hope.

The cruelest punishment of them all.

Reagan spends her days and her nights in her tiny room

(cell)

in the basement and only Martin - usually - comes to see her. It's usually only Martin who speaks to her, feeds her, tends to her injuries

(so many of them and not a one that she can ever remember getting)

and, for all intents and purposes, raises her. He's usually, the only one who ever comes close enough to touch, close enough for her to feel the warmth of another body, close enough that Reagan can feel the cool brush of breath other than her own against her skin.

It's only Martin. Usually. Except when it's Carmilla. She, sometimes, brings Reagan books - usually something gothic and supposedly romantic - and, on occasion, some old and moldy croissants or pastries she steals from the village, when she and Will dare to get close enough.

Reagan remembers the sound of the row  _that_  caused one night, the way Lilita berated Carmilla for 'risking' them all for 'the filth'

(which Reagan guesses is another way of saying 'daughter')

and it's been months, but Reagan can still taste the last raspberry tart Carmilla brought her, the one that was fresh and warm and - without a doubt - the most delicious thing Reagan ever tasted.

She still remembers the way she pretended to be asleep when a bloody and bruised Carmilla

(punished for helping the filth)

sat outside her room that night and the way her 'sister' whispered two words before she too fell asleep, leaning against the wall outside Reagan's door.

_worth it_

She remembers the way Martin and Carmilla taught her to read and about the planets and the stars that she could see out her window, how they taught her about humans and vampires and other… things… that were out there.

"There's two worlds," Carmilla told her. "Men and monsters."

And Reagan remembers, quite clearly, the pained look on Carmilla's face when she asked her "Which am I?", because even at only nine, Reagan is smart enough to know if she is  _just_  'filth', Lilita would have served her to Will long ago.

Reagan remembers all that, but most of all she remembers that no matter how many pastries and stories and stars Carmilla brought her?

She's still chained to a wall.

Sisterly love, Reagan has learned, doesn't really mean a fucking thing.

Blood by birth. Family by choice.

And as the thousand cuts begin again, as the pain rips through her body and Reagan hears Lilita's voice in her ear, whispering and taunting and pushing her closer and closer to an edge she doesn't understand, Reagan knows one thing above all else.

Carmilla's made her choice.

* * *

_Austin, Now_

Martin's been the closest thing Reagan's ever had to a father. He taught her to hunt, to survive, how to defend herself and those she loved against all of the humans  _and_  monsters that came for them when Lilita's empire fell.

He taught her how to bury Santa Muerte so far deep down inside she might never be seen again.

Reagan knows the debt she owes Martin. And she knows it can never really be repaid.

She also knows she's done fucking trying.

If she squints hard enough, stares long enough into the darkness, she can see Martin there, his back pressed against a grave marker, her knife still embedded deep in his leg. She knows she hit close to the artery, knows the blade is plunged so deep it's sealing the wound. If he pulls it loose, he'll bleed out before he can even try to get help.

Lilita's magic long ago made Martin - and Glenn - special, gave them a gift that kept them under her thumb, eternally hers. They cannot die - not of old age or cancer or anything natural - they're both well north of 300 years old.

They can't die. But they can be  _killed_.

Reagan just hopes Martin won't make her be the one to do it.

"She's not Karma anymore, Reagan," he says from somewhere out in the dark. "You  _know_  that."

Lesson number one. The monsters are just that:  _monsters_. Their humanity is gone, stripped from them the moment the beast takes hold, no matter what the face and the smile and the voice and the words might tell you.

Reagan glances down at Karma at her feet. She still remembers the girl she was, back in high school, when they hated each other and Karma was nothing but silly schemes and a desperate need for attention and acceptance.

Martin's sort of right.  _That_  Karma is dead.

He shifts and Reagan can hear his breath grow short, can just make out the faint outline of his hand moving to the hilt of the knife.

Once a hunter…

"You pull that out," Reagan says, "and it's over. You'll be dead before anyone can help."

Martin regards her carefully and she knows he's staring and she knows  _exactly_  what he's thinking.

_She_  could help him. She's right here, she knows how to handle it, she knows exactly what to do.

But she won't.

And later, Reagan will wonder if that's the moment Martin knew he'd lost her.

"If I let a werewolf take my daughter," he says, "I may as well be dead."

Reagan considers pointing out that Karma isn't taking  _her_  anywhere, but she knows that's not what he means.

"You don't owe her anything, Reagan," he says. And Reagan has to wonder just which 'her' he means. The one at her feet or the one in the ground.

"It isn't about owing  _anyone_  anything," Reagan says, only partly lying. She's still tense, waiting and watching and hoping he'll let go of the knife.

Martin doesn't believe her, not even for a second. "Amy's dead, Reagan. And that's wrong, I know. But she's  _dead_  and the rest of us aren't. And the world, whether you like it or not, keeps going. And sooner or later, if you keep living like what she wants still matters? It's going to get you killed."

Sometimes, Reagan isn't sure it hasn't already.

His grip tightens on the knife and a part of her - a small part - respects his determination.

"Don't do this, Martin.  _Please_ ," she says, her voice soft and pleading.

The voice of a nine year old girl begging for it to stop.

But, in the end, it isn't Martin she should be worried about.

Reagan hears Glenn before she sees him. She hears the knife slicing through the air, whistling downward, a short, slicing stroke. He's on his knees behind her, his own blood loss damn near enough to finish him, but not in time. Not before.

Not before he's close enough. Not before his blade hits home. Not before he drags it, one jagged cut across Karma's throat.

Reagan screams in rage and horror, her instincts kicking in and before she even has time to realize what she's doing, she's seized on Glenn, her hands catching him clean, gripping his head as she twists, the sudden violence of the motion matched only by the sickening snap that rings out as his neck breaks.

As  _she_  breaks it.

The next few moments are a blur, one she'll relive for days and nights

(so many nights)

afterward. Martin dives at them

(Reagan will never be sure if he was coming for her or Karma)

the knife ripped from his own leg, the blood so thick on it that it can't even drip, just coating the blade as it swings through the night. It's a wild arc, a desperate swing, so untrained, so unlike him and so easy for her to catch, turning his own momentum against him.

She drives the blade - still clutched in his hand - down, forcing him to plunge it into his own but and then up and twist

(just like he taught her)

and then Martin is gone too. Her father and her brother and Amy's best friend, all dead and gone in less than thirty seconds.

Reagan surveys the carnage, the bodies, the wound on Karma's neck, the life rushing out of her, her blood soaking the ground of Amy's grave.

Family by choice.

And Reagan doesn't  _have_ a choice. And for the second time that night, she lets the shift roll through her, welcomes it, lets it wash her away

(absolution through pain)

and Reagan welcomes  _her_ , like an old friend.

Santa Muerte.

Saint Death comes a calling.

* * *

_France, 1806_

The chains are new, stronger than the last time

(and Reagan remembers now that there was a last time and a time before that and before that and on and on)

and they're biting into her skin, tight enough to mark her, to draw just the thinnest strips of blood. She winces as Martin pulls them tighter, hoisting her off the floor, her feet dangling, the tips of her toes just scraping against the cold rock floor.

And then her toes are gone. And her feet and her arms and the room and she can't see anything but a swirling blur, tides crashing in and out in front of her eyes but then she blinks and it's gone as fast it arrives.

_Can you hear me?_

It's Lilita, but not in her ear. In her  _head_. And the words echo, bouncing from one side of her mind to the other and it hurts, it hurts so very fucking much.

"Please," she says. "Please make it stop."

_You asked me once, about your mother_

The blur is back, swirling in and out of her vision and every time it fade, the light, so bright, so much light and it burns.

"Make it stop."

_I told you I was your mother. But that wasn't true._

_You had a mother._

Reagan can feel the floor now, cold and hard against the soles of her feet, but that's not right, that can't be, the chains are still holding her, she's still dangling from the wall

_Do you know what happened to your mother, Reagan? Do you remember?_

and she strains and fights against them, pulling with all that she has and somewhere, in the far off distance

(or what seems like it, everything but Lilita's voice so far from her)

Reagan hears the sound of metal creaking and groaning and stone blocks crumbling

_She died. Do you remember?_

_Do you remember how?_

and her body is heavy, too heavy, too much, there's just too fucking much and Reagan doesn't know how she can hold it all and she can't, she's bursting, skin popping and swelling and she's desperate, fighting so hard to keep it all in

_You killed her._

and there's a scream, so deep and feral and anything  _but_  human and the thousand cuts rip across her skin, every spot they tear open burning and hissing and her vision returns, the pain bringing clarity and all Reagan can see is Lilita standing before her

_You killed your mother, Reagan. Just like this. When you changed and shifted and found your_ true  _self and you cut your way out of her, gutting that whore like the goddess you are._

and there's one final scream - the last thing Reagan hears before she's washed away and then she's charging, the chains snapping and she's crashing into Lilita slamming her into the wall, her voice gone from her mind

(all she hears now is death)

and hands -  _claws_  - she doesn't recognize wrap around her mother's throat and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until there's nothing left.

No air. No pulse. No life.

"Reagan."

The name means nothing to her but the voice… that voice is calm and sweet and soothing and she  _knows_  it and she turns and there he is. Martin.

"It's alright," he says and she almost believes him. "Come with me. It's going to be alright."

He leads her away, down the hall, past her room

(cell)

and out of sight toward the back of the chalet, away from them, away from the chaos left in her wake.

Will and Carmilla can only watch.

"What the fuck was that?" Will finally manages, barely able to keep the ripple of fear from coating every word.

" _That_ ," Lilita says as she rises behind them, "is what I've been waiting nine years for."

If either of them are shocked at her resurrection… well.. they're not.

Carmilla and Will learned years ago that Lilita never stays dead.

"Waiting?" Will asks. "You wanted that to happen?"

Lilita smiles at him, like a parent smiling at a child taking their first clumsy staggering steps.

"That," she says, "is what will restore us all. That was what will return our family to it's rightful place among the beasts and the monster.  _That_  was  _o fim de tudo."_

She pushes past them, heading in the direction Martin took Reagan, leaving them alone amongst the rubble.

"My Spanish sucks," Will mutters. "What the hell does that mean?"

Carmilla shakes her head. "It's not Spanish. It's Portuguese." Brazilian Portuguese to be exact, but Will wouldn't know Brazilian Portuguese from a Brazil nut. "And," she says, "it means the end."

The end of all.


	4. Chapter 4

_**A/N: Previously: Reagan killed her father and brother after they killed Karma. And we discovered that Carmilla, Will, and their mother were responsible for making Reagan into the monster she is. Now we find out if Karma's really dead, whose side Will's on, and Reagan discovers somethings about her late wife she might not want to know.** _

_Styria, Present Day_

The call comes just before two am and Carmilla tries, mostly unsuccessfully, to not freak out, to not panic more than she already is.

Between Amy's presence, Lilita's obvious plan to do…  _something_ … with Reagan, and Laura and LaF's disappearance, she's just about reached her limit. She's sitting on the edge of her bed, idly playing with the corner of the yellow pillow she's yet again stolen from Laura, trying to focus on the way the fabric feels beneath her fingers, the way the color contrasts against her pale skin.

Anything to keep her mind occupied.

Will's on the other bed, his knees jiggling and his hands fidgeting in his lap. He's doing  _his_  best - which isn't all that good - to seem at least somewhat comfortable, like being here in this room with her isn't about the weirdest fucking thing he's done in years.

He's never been good at this part of it, of the normal 'human' ways of interacting. Carmilla only knew him briefly before he turned and he's seemed an alright sort, a little introspective maybe, a bit withdrawn, but decent enough. But since Lilita turned him,  _this_  has always been his weakest point. The pretending, the keeping of appearances. No matter how many times they had to do it over the centuries, Will's never been good at being anything but what he is. He was a horrible villager and a (barely) adequate townsperson. He was better at it when they lived in cities, when he could blend into the throng and disappear, only coming out when there was the need to hunt or some party or ball to go to when he could hide behind a mask - a  _real_  one - and not have to restrain himself.

He's spent the year and a half playing college student and even he would admit, he's done a fuck all job of it.

About the only part of it that's ever seemed anything but forced is his friendship with Kirsch, which somehow even survived the Zeta finding out his best bro was a bloodsucker. In fact, in some ways, it's seemed to Carmilla that the two of them have grown even closer since Will gave up pretending. She's always meant to ask him about that but most of  _their_  conversations are short, one sided, and usually focused on whatever fresh hell their mother is preparing to unleash.

Carmilla's not even sure, not really, why he's even here. She doesn't know why he came back to her room with her after their chat in the church. Maybe, she thinks, he wants to see Amy for himself, though he hasn't mentioned her once. More likely, it has something to do with finding out their demonic mother apparently has some plans involving their  _more_  than demonic sister.

_o fim de tudo_  and Lilita? Yeah, Carmilla guesses that could be cause for  _anyone,_ even Will, to not want to be alone.

Whatever the reason, she's not entirely comfortable with him being here - something about letting the fox into the hen house - particularly given that she doesn't know  _exactly_  where his loyalties lie and, she suspects, he doesn't either. Will's never been the planner of the family, never been the one to see (or even  _look_ ) more than five feet or five minutes in front of him. He plays it by ear, rolls with what comes his way, and sides with whomever is least likely to view him as a threat.

Right now, Carmilla thinks rolling with all this might be just a touch out of Will's depth. And hers.

The call comes in just as the silence makes that first shift from companionable to awkward and her relief at the break comes in second only to her hope that the call means they've found Laura. Danny's voice on the other end of the line is a hushed whisper and Carmilla knows she only called - only risked being heard at all - to make sure the message got through.

"Found Laura. Lustig. Vamps. Need help."

The line goes dead and Carmilla wishes, just once, Xena didn't treat every hunting or recon expedition like some sort of para-military exercise. Sooner or later Danny's going to find herself up against something she can't handle, but thinks she can, and it's going to get her and everyone with her killed.

Still, they have found Laura, so that's something.

Later - much later - Carmilla will remember this and wonder at just how easily she missed it, why it didn't set off every alarm bell she had. It will strike her then just how easily they found her, how quickly a college coed and three neanderthal Zetas tracked down what has to be her mother's most prized captive. For a moment, she'll brush it off as all part of Lilita's plan, as her mother wanting them to find Laura, to use her as some sort of Trojan Horse move.

And she won't be wrong.

But then, when they've suffered their worst losses, when people she hardly knows and people she loves are dying all around her and she finds herself with the Blade of Hastur run through her chest and her mother's claws around Reagan's neck, she's going to wonder.

How did she not see the betrayal coming?

Love. It's a fucking blinder.

She drops her phone back in her pocket and scoops up two of the stakes Danny's piled by the dorm room door. All of their rooms have been stocked with them and Carmilla knows the redhead's room is the worst. It looks like some sort of medieval weapons locker.

"I have to go," she says, glancing at Will. "Be careful, whatever you do," she says. "And try not to make me have to kill you."

Will stands from the bed and, for the briefest of moments, Carmilla thinks he's going to hug her and she has no idea what to do with  _that_. But then he bends, grabbing his own pair of stakes and stares at her expectantly.

"Let's go, Kitty," he finally says after she doesn't move or speak or do much other than stare at him with her mouth gaping open but totally incapable of making a sound. "Your tiny little gay girlfriend isn't going to save herself.

* * *

_Austin, Present Day_

In Reagan's world - her  _old_  world, the one she escaped with Martin and Glenn so many years ago - it's called the  _elo_.

It's an ancient bit of magic or power or, depending on how you look at it, evil. Only the most powerful or the oldest of creatures can do it.

Reagan's done it now twice.

She's never really understood exactly how the  _elo_  works; she's not sure anyone does. Martin used to ramble on and on about the exchange of energies and the linkage of souls, but Reagan never quite bought in.

Only monsters can do it. And what the fuck do they know about souls?

Carmilla had a  _slightly_  different take. She used to tell Reagan stories about it, one in particular about how the ancients, the Old Ones, used it as a weapon, as punishment.

"There was a vampire," Carmilla said. "A powerful one who broke from nest and slew her sire. She fractured the code and killed hundreds of them, Old Ones and their progeny alike before they caught her."

"They?" Reagan asked.

"The oldest of the Old Ones. The darkness, the… we call them the  _Firsts_ ," Carmilla said. "They were the ones who created the  _elo_. They brought it out of themselves, forged the magic from their own blood and spirit. And when it was done, when it was formed and made… flesh… they turned it on her."

Reagan imagined all sorts of things, things she didn't want to ever see or hear or think of again.

Things Santa Muerte  _reveled_  in.

"They ripped their way into her mind," Carmilla said. "The  _elo_  linked them all, burned their minds, their memories, their essence into her. They wiped out everything she knew, everything she believed and left her with a life she'd never had. One that made her their slave, their  _pawn_."

Even then, Reagan knew the feeling.

About the only thing she  _does_  understand about the  _elo_  is that joining. It bonds, it  _ties_. It's more intimate than sex, more spiritual than marriage, more powerful - in some respects - than love.

Sex and marriage and love - they're the stuff of life. The  _elo_ … it's not the stuff of death but something worse. It cheats death, defeats it, wrenches life back from its clutches and you would think that's  _good_ , but what it leaves in its place…

Reagan felt it once. She felt that bond, that joining, felt her spirit and her mind merge with another.

And it fucking  _hurt_. A pain beyond physical, as if her entire being was shoved aside, cracked and splintered and suffocated under another. Memories joined and jostled and replaced, some lost, never to be found again. Feelings that weren't hers, but  _were_. Months of never being sure if her thoughts or emotions or… anything… was her.

About the only other thing she knows about it, knows for sure? It works. And that meant it was her only choice, the only way she could save Karma after Glenn slit her throat.

She didn't have much time - the  _elo_  only works on the freshly dead

(Amy was too long gone by the time Reagan got to her)

and the more devastating the injury, the more fatal the blow - and it took Reagan  _years_  to understand that there were degrees of fatal - the harder it was to do.

The shift, Reagan had expected, would be the worst. She hadn't let Santa Muerte run free in months and now she was turning her loose twice in one night. If there had been any other way…

No. She still would have shifted. This was Karma.  _Amy's_  Karma. Reagan had to be sure.

She wouldn't remember, she wouldn't wake from it with Karma's blood on her lips and the taste of bone on her tongue. The  _elo_  would be all that was left, no physical signs at all. Just memories and images and bits and pieces of Karma's mind rolling around in hers. A small price to pay to bring her back, to save her.

A small price.

Or so Reagan thought.

* * *

_Styria, Present Day_

The run to the Lustig doesn't take long. Carmilla knows she could just pop in, just port her way over there, but there's no way she's risking Laura's life by going in blind and finding herself neck deep in a nest full of vamps. Plus, there's the whole Will thing.

She's got no earthly (or more than earthly) idea why he's coming with her

(Switzerland isn't supposed to get involved)

but there he is, keeping pace next to her with a stake in each hand and an unreadable expression on his face. She doesn't like that and not because it means she doesn't know what's coming

(not  _just_  that)

but this is  _Will_. He's not supposed to be unreadable, he's not supposed to be mysterious. They have a dynamic -  _had_  a dynamic. Reagan was anger, Carmilla was brood and sulk, and Will was the id. He was vampire hunger and debauchery personified.

Will is not now and never was a hero.

And yet, here he is.

Maybe, Carmilla thinks, this is it, this is the turning point for them she always assumed would someday come. This is the day when he finally makes his choice and climbs down off the fucking fence.

Or, maybe it's the day he's leading her right into a trap so he can kill everyone she loves while he makes her watch.

She's not sure which she should be more worried about. The vamps in front of her? Or the one beside her?

They stop about a hundred yards from the Lustig, taking cover in the tree line. Danny and Kirsch and two Zetas Carmilla doesn't know have ducked behind some scrub brush about fifty feet away. Danny spots them, her eyes growing wide at the sight of Will with her, but Carmilla shakes her head slightly.

Not. Now.

Danny pulls her phone and holds it up, signalling to Carmilla. The vampire reaches for her own just as the text buzzes in. It is, as Danny's messages always are, right to the point.

_Laura in basement. Two guards here. Two more below._

Four vamps. Not good, but not bad either. Carmilla knows she can probably take two of them and at least distract the others long enough for Danny and Kirsch to save Laura. It's not her best work, as plans go, but it will have to do.

Her phone buzzes again as Danny's second text - the one the fucks up everything comes in.

It's only one word.

_Ana._

"Shit," Carmilla breathes. "Shit, shit, fucking  _shit_."

Will peers over at her and nudges her with the blunt end of one stake. She holds up the phone for him to see.

"Shit," he agrees, but - much to her surprise - he stays put.

Ana. Their mother's number two. Recent developments - those demons Will mentioned, the ones he has no names for - might have knocked her down the food chain a peg or two, but that might actually make it worse. She'll be itching to impress Lilita, to show her that those demons are an unnecessary gamble, and unneeded addition to the team.

Why bring in outside help when you already have the most sadistic, evil, and generally soulless motherfucker either of them have ever met?

And they've met  _o fim de tudo._

Fuck the plan, fuck taking two of them and distracting the others. This isn't a snatch and grab anymore. There's no way, Carmilla knows, this isn't going to get ugly.

"We need to regroup," she mutters, mostly to herself. "We need a plan, some kind of strategy to -"

She stops abruptly as Will rises from his crouch, slips out from behind his tree and starts walking - fucking  _walking_  - toward the Lustig, with his stakes in his hand and a smile on his face.

He signals her, discreetly, to follow.

And Camilla thinks  _that's_  just the best fucking plan ever because, in three hundred years, when has following Will ever lead anywhere good?

But she does it anyway. Because really, what choice does she have?

It's time to find out whose side of the fence Will's sitting on.

* * *

_Austin, Present Day_

Reagan hears the first of the howls just as she finishes loading Karma into the truck and mutters a bitter "Fuck" under her breath.

She thought she'd have more time. Karma had only been dead what, three minutes tops? The pack shouldn't have sensed it that fast, not with all the other supernatural shit rippling through the air. If luck was with her, she'd have been halfway to Liam's before they even knew what was going on.

You just killed your father and brother, she thinks. Luck's got the night off.

The pack knows now, knows Karma is here and that she's dead or, at the very least, dying. Which,  _technically_ , she is. And they're going to want to finish the job. That's pack way, that's pack law.

You kill the Alpha - you  _murder_  the Alpha - and you sign your own death warrant.

The pack has been waiting a long time to get their hands on Karma and Reagan knows they'll do whatever it takes to get to her. Which means she's going to have to do even more to protect her.

Reagan makes one last quick check of the bungee cords she's using to hold Karma in place, yanking them hard. It wouldn't do to have Karma come loose on the first sharp turn and go flying against the tailgate. Or for her to suddenly come to as a very violent, angry, and powerful wolf.

Reagan just brought her back to life, it would really suck to have to kill her again.

She limps to the front of the truck, her body not cooperating. She remembers (or could if she didn't force the thoughts away) a time when she could've shifted twice in one night without breaking a sweat, without feeling like she'd just gone on a three day long bender.

It takes work, Carmilla always said. LIke anything else. Practice, practice, practice.

Do it enough, the vampire told her, and you won't even feel it. It will just happen.

Reagan braces herself against the side of the truck and then slams her right shoulder into it, hard, popping the stubborn joint back into place.

Practice, she thinks. All about practice.

She leans her head on the cool metal, trying to collect herself - literally. She's in bits and pieces inside. The Reagan that's roamed Austin for the last decade plus is dancing around in there, searching, looking for openings, looking for ways to crawl and wiggle and squirm back out.

But  _she's_  in there too.

And Santa Muerte doesn't want to go back. She doesn't like the cage, she doesn't like the hole Reagan spent years digging in her own mind just so she could throw her in and bury her there.

Martin taught her to do it.

But Martin's dead.

It's the sound of the howls - still a ways off, but closer now - that helps her forge the peace. It doesn't matter which of them is out, doesn't matter which of them is running the show. Saving Karma took a lot out of both of them - almost everything - and neither of them, not Reagan and not Saint Death herself, can handle the pack. Not right now. Not alone.

She needs time. She needs space

_(She_  needs to feed)

and she needs somewhere with protection, with backup.

She needs Liam.

Reagan's tapping out the text even as she hauls herself into the truck, wincing as her knee collides with the door on the way in.

_On my way. Trouble behind me. Call Duke. Lock down._

She knows she should tell him more, like she should - probably - mention that she's bringing his ex-wife with her. His 'was just briefly dead ex-wife' who, when she wakes up, is going to have a fuck load of explaining to do for some of the things Reagan saw in her head.

Things she's  _seeing_.

_Kissing. A lot of kissing._

_Kissing Amy._

_Fucking. More kissing and fucking and kissing and sweet tender moments._

_With Amy._

_I love you. I love you, Karma. It was always you._

Reagan shakes her head and slams the truck into gear. She doesn't know what the hell that was and right now, she can't care. Right now, she has to focus on making it to Liam's, hoping he listens and gets Duke and gets the fence prepped and he's waiting for her at the door.

The wolves howl again. Closer now.

Too fucking close.

_I love you, Karma_.

Reagan presses down on the gas, pulling out before she has time to think. Before she has time to consider leaving Karma to the wolves.

* * *

_Styria, Present Day_

The two vamps on the door see Will and Carmilla coming. A quick whisper between them and one disappears into the building.

"He's gone to get -"

"I know," Will says, cutting her off. "Ana."

And speak of the devil and the bitch even he fears appears.

Ana walks through the doors of the Lustig with her minion at her side and it's all Carmilla can do not to toss a quick glance back at Danny

(or to yell to them to run)

because a couple of her mother's low level vampire enforcers  _might_  be something they could handle.

Ana is not.

She's been around since the fall of Lilita's empire of death and destruction, since Martin and Carmilla conspired to help Reagan escape and brought the whole thing crashing down on itself. Lilita was ripe then, primed for the taking and any number of killers - both human and otherwise - made their play.

Ana fended them off. Every last fucking one.

She was a loner, a hanger on who'd come along and joined up when she'd seen no better option. Carmilla had always thought Ana was nothing but muscle, a thug with fangs, but after the fall, she'd shown she was more -  _much_  more - than that.

Carmilla and Martin had planned it to the 'T'. With Reagan gone, with no  _o fim de tudo_  to shift the balance in her favor, Lilita would be an easy target. She'd last a few months, maybe, the dregs of her forces (the ones that stayed loyal) slowly being picked off bit by bit.

You don't destroy entire cities, enslave races of demons, and kill thousands and not make a few enemies that might come calling when the chips are down.

They'd expected the most powerful of Lilita's little army to - at best - leave her or - at worst - betray her, try to seize the throne while there was still one left to be had. It would have been quick and dirty and over.

Except for Ana.

It would have been easy - far easier than protecting her - for Ana or any of the others who had stayed in servitude to Lilita to sell her out, to join up with any one of the many who came to take her head. But Ana never took easy, never wavered, never once did anything but stay loyal.

Ana stayed because she knew. If Lilita survived, she would rise again. And when she did? Those who had remained loyal would be rewarded. And those who had not?

Well… Austria was littered with their remains. If there were any remains to be had.

Carmilla tried her best over the years not to think about  _that_. It was easier than waking up in a cold sweat imagining Ana there in the dark, watching her. The fact that Ana had never come for her, not even after she had chained Lilita and dumped her at the bottom of the fucking ocean, surprised Carmilla.

More than that, it  _scared_ her.

And she definitely didn't like to think about  _that_.

Will slows, just a step when Ana appears. He's always had something of a… crush?... on her, one that plays on his kinky side - that vampire id again - the part of him that might not mind suffering just a bit under her.

_Under_  her.

Carmilla knows her brother well enough to know if there's any inclination in his head to side with Lilita, the sight of Ana (all leather pants and way too fucking tight shirt and tattoos - inked with her victim's blood, or so the story goes - snaking up her neck) will only make it stronger.

Carm tightens her grip on the stakes in her hands and does the quick mental math.

She can take the two vamp goons without a problem, she thinks. Ana… that might ( _would_ ) be an issue. And Will, if he chose the other side?

Yeah, she doesn't want to think about that.

"Will," Ana says with a curt nod. She doesn't seem surprised to see him, which does nothing to ease the worry rising in Carmilla. "Carmilla."

Even before Carmilla turned on Lilita, Ana always regarded her as something lesser, something to be stepped on, squashed like a bug. Daughter of the demon or not, Ana had about as much use for Carmilla as she did for any of the other humans or monsters they slaughtered along the way.

"You don't seem surprised to see us," Will says and when he says 'us', Carmilla hears 'me'. He stops walking just out of arm's reach of Ana's two lackeys.

Ana shrugs, but Carmilla sees through it, sees the practice in the 'well practiced' indifference.

"Do you really think  _anything_  either of you do is a surprise, Will?" She speaks to Will like a teacher to a failing student. Ana's never understood why Lilita puts up with the way Will refuses to choose a side.

Ana is nothing if not loyal. And those who can't seem to manage that are beneath contempt.

"Your mother thought you might come," Ana says. "Carmilla, she was sure of. You…" Ana shrugs again and the way her muscles work under her shirt remind Carmilla of how Reagan used to look, of the way her body  _blossomed_  as she changed and shifted and Santa Muerte appeared.

Not for the first time, Carmilla misses the sense of security having the most powerful monster on the planet backing you up provided. Now? Now it's just her, Xena, a few cannon fodder Zetas, and Will.

_Maybe_ Will.

"I'm here for Laura," Carmilla says, trying desperately to move the topic away from Will.

"I'm sure you are," Ana says, leaning back up against the wall of the Lustig. She seems less than concerned that  _either_  of them are there. "That's what your friends out there in the bushes are here for too, right?"

Carmilla takes one small step to her left, trying to discreetly put herself just the tiniest bit closer to her friends

(and yes, she did think of them as  _friends_  and she's going to have to have a  _very_  long think about that later.)

"You can have her," Ana says. "Your mother's done with her."

_Done with her_.

Carmilla's blood freezes.

"She's fine, by the way," Ana continues. "Not a hair out of place. The other one…"

LaF.  _Fuck_.

"What about the other one?" Will asks.

"She might be a little worse for wear," Ana replies, a sick little smile flirting with the corner of her lips.

"They," Carmilla says.

"What?"

"They," she repeats. "LaF prefers 'they', not 'she'."

Ana's eyes dance with something Carmilla can't quite place and she thinks, maybe, the bitch is actually impressed. Will turns to look at her and Carmilla can feel him staring at her, not quite believing that she just corrected Ana on pronoun usage  _right fucking now_.

" _They_ ," Ana says, "are free to go as well. I'll even tell you where  _they_  are. As soon as I deliver my message."

"What message?" Carmilla and Will talk over each other, asking the same thing.

Ana steps away from the building and squares herself between her minions. "Your mother thought you might be here, Will, ever since you and Carmilla had your little chat about the Raudenfeld girl."

Guess that answers the question of how much Lilita knows about Amy. And about them.

"She wanted me to let you know," Ana says, "that all can still be forgiven. But you have to choose."

"Choose?" Will asks, playing dumb.

Ana shakes her head. "You've done this little dance of yours for centuries now, Will. And the dance floor's starting to get a bit crowded. It's time you pick a partner."

Carmilla doesn't look at him, she doesn't dare.

"Your mother wants you to know something,  _both of you_ ," Ana says. "She said to tell you that the end is on her way. And you, Will, either get a ringside seat and a chance to be standing when it's all said and done or you get to die. Slowly. And screaming while  _she_  peels the flesh from your bones one strip at a time."

Carmilla doesn't need to ask.  _She_.

Fuck. Lilita's got Reagan. She's got Santa Muerte. Or she will.

"Make your choice, Will," Ana says. "And I'll tell Carmilla where her friend is. And then we can all go on our way."

Will doesn't say anything for a long moment and Carmilla, briefly, thinks he's going to choose her. That, after all this time, he's finally going to hop off the fucking fence and get in the fight.

And then he steps forward, next to Ana, and turns to face Carmilla, but he doesn't look at her.

He  _can't._

"I'm sorry, Kitty," he says. "I'm truly sorry."

Ana smiles next to him and Carmilla knows what's coming before she even says the words.

"Smart boy, Will," Ana says. "And now? You and I? We're going to kill of Carmilla's little friends while we make her watch." She glares at Carmilla. "And we're saving Laura for last."


	5. Chapter 5

_**A/N: Reagan tries to outrun the wolf pack to save Karma while arguing with her dead wife. Who may or may not be real and may or may not have slept with Karma. You know, the usual.** _

It took Reagan seven months to stop seeing Amy everywhere.

Seven long months - the longest of her life - and one touch, one  _elo_ , one last ditch desperate attempt to save Karma brings it all back.

It took so long, so  _fucking_  long for Reagan to stop seeing her - her dead wife - around every corner, to stop seeing her smile in the mirror, to stop seeing her eyes staring back at her from every face.

It was comforting - oddly enough - at first. In a way, it was like Amy wasn't  _really_  gone. Reagan knew enough about ghosts and spirits and the  _real_ shit that happens after we die

(not a fucking thing)

to know that it wasn't really Amy she was seeing. As much as she might have wanted it to be, Reagan knew it wasn't really her wife reaching out to her from the other side, that it wasn't really the love of her life watching over her.

That was romantic fantasy. That was Hallmark movie bullshit, the sort of thing Karma loved.

Reagan knew better.

Which didn't mean she didn't let herself think it, that she didn't  _let_  herself believe, just a little.

She had to.

The first month or so, it was a Godsend, the only thing that got her through. It was, Reagan figured, not unlike an addiction. She couldn't go cold turkey

(fuck the fact that that's how death  _works_ )

(she's Santa Muerte) (she  _knows_  how it works)

and she needed to wean herself off Amy. Slowly. A bit at a time.

And  _that_  was all so much bullshit and she knew it and everyone around her knew it.

"You need to let her go, Reagan," Martin said. "You can't lose yourself to keep someone that's already gone."

"It's not healthy is all I'm saying," Lauren told her. "I loved her too, but if you keep going like this, you're going to end up as lost to us as she is."

"Fuck 'em," Liam said. "You see Amy? Tell her I said hi. And I miss her."

There were reasons she kept Liam around.

For the first month or so, it hurt but Reagan didn't care. She didn't give a damn if Amy never said another word, if she couldn't touch her or hold her or be with her. She'd take what she could get.

And then she couldn't take it anymore.

If anyone asked, Reagan would never have been able to pinpoint the moment, never quite nail down exactly when it stopped being a good hurt, the kind she could live with, and when it just started to  _hurt_. Seeing Amy there - everywhere - it was all too much.

Amy was at the club, some random club Reagan spent the weekend spinning at

(trying to get back out there like Martin said)

(mingling with the living - the  _normal_  living - like Lauren wanted)

trying to regain something of who she was, who she'd  _been_.

Amy was in the dark corners of the movie theaters Reagan hid in when she needed somewhere loud and dark and the fuck away from everyone's well wishes and helpful advice.

Amy was there, in the truck with her, with her feet propped up on the dash and her seat tipped back as Reagan drove for hours on end with no particular place to go.

Somewhere in there, some point she could never single out, Reagan felt it shift. It wasn't good anymore, it didn't help, it didn't make her feel any more connected to Amy

(neither did the drinking or the random girls or the occasional hunt but at the least those numbed her)

and it was less watching over and reaching out and more -  _all_  - pain and obsession. Amy had become an anchor, holding Reagan in place. She couldn't move forward even if she wanted to.

And it never stopped. Amy was there. Amy was everywhere. She was watching over Martin's shoulder as he tried to convince Reagan to take up the hunt again. She was on the couch between Reagan and Liam as they sat there, not talking, neither of them in the mood for analysis or thought or conversation, just needing someone to share the silence with.

She was on the other end of the line when Reagan's phone rang and no one was there

(even if Reagan  _knew_ it was really Karma, reaching out from where-the-hell-ever she was, she could still hear - could  _feel_  - Amy's breath on the other end of the line)

and she was sitting on the hood of the truck every time Reagan staggered home drunk, the taste of another woman on her lips.

"Shut up," Reagan said to her, to her  _silent_  wife. "Fuck you. You don't get to judge me.  _You_  don't get to be disappointed or hurt."

She'd glare at Amy, stare her down, and then squeeze her eyes shut, praying when she opened them her wife would be gone.

Amy never was.

"Fuck you," Reagan said again. "You're  _dead_. You fucking died and you fucking left me here and you're gonna sit there and judge me? You're gonna sit there and stare and never say a fucking thing?"

Amy never did.

"Fuck. You." Reagan pounded the hood of the truck but Amy never so much as flinched. "Fuck you and your ghostly fucking stares and your judgemental bullshit. I'm doing what I have to. I'm  _living_."

She pulled herself up onto the hood, straddling the woman who wasn't really there, staring into her eyes.

" _I'm_ living," she said. "What the fuck are you doing?"

And then the tears came and Reagan fell, crumpling against the cold metal of the truck, the unforgiving and unwelcoming steel that had replaced the Amy who had never been real.

"Just leave me alone," she sobbed. "Please just leave me alone."

It took Amy seven months to listen.

* * *

The drive to Liam's takes ten minutes. Reagan's gonna do it in eight.

That's what happens when the wolves are on your heels.

The pack's moving quickly, quicker than she expected, and there's a moment, about half a mile from Liam's house, when she's not sure she can outrun them. They're everywhere. A flash of movement in her rear view, a streak of fur in her peripheral. There's a moment, just one, when Reagan is sure they're going to catch them.

And she's got no fucking clue what to do then.

"You fight," Amy says from the passenger seat. " _That's_  what you do."

Reagan's hands tighten on the wheel and she rides the gas a little harder.

Fuck eight minutes. She's doing it in six.

She shakes her head and blinks her eyes, hoping -  _praying_  - it'll be enough to make Amy

(her Karma induced hallucination of her)

disappear, but that, it would seem, is not going to happen.

"You can stop ignoring me anytime, you know," Amy says and Reagan jams the pedal all the way to the floor, swerving through traffic - and why the hell is there this much traffic on a Wednesday night in Austin - and ignores…  _her_ … just a little harder.

"I'm just saying," Amy says

(and Reagan really needs to stop thinking of her as Amy because she's  _not_  Amy, she's nothing more than some  _elo_  caused fantasy of her dead wife, some fragmented remnant of a woman Karma remembers)

(a woman Karma remembers  _kissing_  and  _holding_  and  _fucking_ )

(and Reagan  _really_  needs to stop thinking about that)

"I'm just saying,"Amy says again, "it's been what? A year and a half? You could at least pretend to be happy to see me."

There's a howl in the distance, but not distant enough and Reagan grips the wheel harder.

"After all," Amy says, "pretending is what you do best, isn't it?"

Reagan stares straight ahead, concentrating on the road, on the white lines and the cars she's swinging around, on the strip of blacktop right in front of her, lit faintly by her headlights.

"Like right now, for example," Amy says. She stretches her feet out, letting her bare toes

(always barefoot) ( _I like the feel of the glass on my toes)_

brush against the windshield and Reagan has to force herself not to look for smudges on the glass.

"Right now," Amy rolls on, "you're pretending I'm not real. You're pretending I'm some hallucination, some figment of Karma's imagination." She twists in the seat so she can look at Reagan. "You're pretending you don't hear me, that you didn't see me in her mind, kissing her, letting her hands roam over my body, touching all the places you thought were yours, her head between my -"

Reagan yanks the parking brake, skidding the truck off the road and to a halt just outside the gate of the Booker family's gated community.

"Shut. Up." she says, her knuckles white on the wheel.

Amy laughs and fuck all if it isn't  _her_ laugh. "You  _can_  speak," she says.

Reagan shakes her head but still won't look at…  _her_. "You  _aren't_  real, you aren't my wife. You're nothing. Just a side effect. A… symptom… of the  _elo_. Nothing more."

Amy nods thoughtfully. "Maybe," she says. "Except… you've done the  _elo_  before. When you saved your 'sister'."

(and the air quotes are so fucking Amy that it hurts)

"And there weren't hallucinations then, right?" Amy leans a little closer. "You never saw her ex-lovers, did you? The ghosts of Carmilla's past never visited you then."

There's a howl from somewhere to the west and Reagan releases the brake, moves to shift the truck into drive.

"I'm real, Reagan," Amy says. "Whether you want to admit it or not. I'm not a delusion, I'm not a vision or a hallucination. I'm Am-"

She stops dead at the sight of the hand at her throat, fingers opening and closing

(squeezing) (gripping) ( _strangling_ )

inches from her skin, Reagan glaring at her in the dark of the truck.

"You  _are not_. And you  _are_  going to shut. the. fuck. up.  _Now_."

Amy smiles

(and that smile?  _That's_ not Amy, not even a little and it sends a shiver down Reagan's spine she hasn't felt in years)

as she looks down at Reagan's hand, at the distance between it and her neck, her throat and it's so fucking obvious - to both of them - that no matter what her words say, no matter how angry she seems?

Reagan still can't even come  _close_  to hurting her.

Just in case.

Amy looks back up at her, her eyes slowly moving up her arm, and along her neck, like she's eyeing a prized cut of beef

(and there's that shiver again)

before finally settling on Reagan's face, eyes meeting.

There's another howl, not far away, and then another and one more after that.

And there's that smile again.

"Reagan?" Amy says and Reagan swears she can  _feel_  the words in her head. "I think you better run."

* * *

The first seven months or so, Reagan saw Farrah every weekend, a standing Sunday lunch date that she kept without fail.

(No matter how hung over she was, no matter who she spent the night with.)

Sometimes, every once in awhile - almost always on those Sundays when Reagan was far from at her best - Farrah brought Lauren along. And Lauren would, sometimes, bring baby Amy, the tiny beautiful baby daughter she and Theo had adopted.

Baby Amy was the light of her grandmother's life with her blonde hair and fair skin and all the attitude of the aunt she was named after.

And sometimes - every  _fucking_ time - Amy was there, the real Amy

(as real as she'd ever be)

standing silently by while Reagan smiled the realest smile she could manage and stared at that little baby that she's never, ever hold, and somehow managed to not shed a single tear for what might have been.

Those Reagan preferred to cry in private.

Reagan knew what Farrah was doing, even if she didn't know exactly how the older woman knew  _when_  to do it every time. She knew her mother-in-law was trying to make things better, that she was just trying to make them all even the tiniest but happier and sometimes - most times, if only for a little while - it worked.

Those days were just a little brighter and there was a peace that settled in Reagan's heart and she could close her eyes and listen to Farrah saying that name

(Amy) (Amy) (Amy)

over and over again and - just for those moments - it was like her world hadn't ended.

And then she'd open her eyes and see Amy standing there and it ended all over again.

Slowly, week by week, Reagan grew to hate those Sunday lunches, to hate every moment she had to spend with Farrah and Lauren, hated the way  _her_  name

(Amy) (Amy) (Amy)

rolled off both their tongues but it wasn't  _her_ name, it was this new one, this replacement Amy

(and yes, she knew how insane that was)

and she hated the way they were trying, how they seemed to be making it work, how they seemed to be moving on, how  _their_ world kept turning and they weren't counting every day, every hour, every fucking second without her.

Reagan came to hate it all. And she could feel herself starting to hate  _them_.

They didn't see Amy there, her presence wasn't a constant reminder for them that she wasn't there, that she never would be again. Reagan hated them for that, hated them for how they never talked about her, how they talked  _around_  her, about times and places and memories of things she'd done.

But they never once said  _her_  name.

It was like Amy had been redacted from her own life and Reagan didn't know what the hell that did to hers.

It went on like that for months and Reagan - no matter how much she hated it - did what she did with every other part of her life. She lived with it.

Right up till the moment she just couldn't live with it one second more.

* * *

_You better run_

It might be - hell, it  _is_  - the only thing Amy's said Reagan's agreed with.

(Maybe not the  _only_  thing, but now is not the time for  _that_.)

Reagan takes the last turn on the road to the Booker mansion on two wheels and the truck's gears whine and protest, but they hold.

Story of her life, really.

Over the squeal of metal on metal, she hears the howls - six of them now, at least - and they're close, too close, and she knows her little stop has probably cost her.

Four more howls echo over the hills and the far end of the community and Reagan steers the truck toward Liam's, praying she's going to make it in time, but knowing she's not.

"They're gonna beat you there, you know?" Amy says. "They know where you're going and they're going to get there first."

She's been silent since Reagan started the truck again and as much as Reagan hates hearing her, as much as she hates hearing Amy's voice saying things Amy -  _her_  Amy - would never say, she thinks the silence might have been worse. At least ignoring her had kept Reagan from thinking about how absolutely she and Karma were both fucked.

"They're not going to stop," Amy says. "They'll kill you, Liam, Duke. It doesn't matter. They won't stop until they get her and you know it. It's the  _ira_."

It is. Reagan knows it. She can feel it, she's felt it since she used the  _elo_  on Karma. The  _ira -_ the wrath - the anger and hate and need for vengeance that bubbles up in the wolves, making them mad with desire for blood

(Karma's blood)

is part and parcel of being in the pack. It's pack law. And for the wolves, law isn't written down or codified or chiseled into stone. It's DNA, it's blood, it's the thing that binds them together, makes them one, even more than the bite or the shift or the fucking moon.

The  _ira_  is one. The  _ira_ is all.

Karma ignited it, she set the pack's blood ablaze when she ripped their Alpha's heart from his body to save Reagan. It's aimed at her - it's coming  _for_  her - and the only thing that will satisfy it is her death. But she still feels it too. It ripples within her, riding along her blood, racing her heart.

Traitor or not, she's still pack.

And now, so is Reagan.

She can feel it in her blood, roaring against her skin, aching for release.

And she can feel Santa Muerte feasting on it.

This is so not going to end well.

The howls rip through the air, all ten of them in perfect synchronicity. They're not coming. They're  _here,_ they're all around her, spreading out, flanking her, slowly casting the net.

"They're good," Amy says as she stares into the dark. "Not rushing in, taking their time." She smiles at Reagan, that same sick grin. "They must know it's you. Nobody fucks with Santa Muerte, right?"

Reagan's eyes squeeze shut and she - no matter how hard she fights it - lets out a whimper, a weak and pained sounding thing and it's all she can do to not throw herself to the wolves then and there.

Amy - her Amy, this Amy, any fucking Amy - has never said it. Never used those words.

Never spoken that name.

"That's why," Amy says quietly, scooting back in her seat and pulling her knees to her chest. "In case you were wondering. That's why I turned to Karma."

Reagan pulls up at the end of the Booker's seemingly never ending driveway and kills the engine. She knows there's no point in going any further. They're fenced in.

"It never happened," she says softly, staring through the windshield into the dark, trying - and failing - to pick out the tiny pinpricks of light. Wolf eyes. "Amy and Karma. It never happened."

"I  _am_  Amy," the blonde says. "And it happened. Over and over and over again." Her eyes fix on Reagan in the dark and there's something in them, a pain - a loss - that Reagan's never seen. "The only reason it stopped was because you sent her away."

"I sent her…" Reagan shakes her head. "I sent Karma away to  _save_ her," she says. "To save her from  _this_." She waves her hand out into the dark, encompassing the pack they can't see, but that Reagan can feel.

Karma groans in the back of the truck, her arms and legs fighting against her restraints. She can feel them too. The  _ira_  grows stronger the closer the pack gets.

"I don't have time for this," Reagan says, undoing her seatbelt and climbing down from the truck before Amy can protest. "You're a delusion, some mix of Karma's fantasies and my fears -"

"You were afraid her?" Amy asks. "You were. You were afraid I'd choose her.  _That's_ why you sent her away."

Reagan makes her way to the back of the truck, dropping the tailgate and finding the duffel bag she's stashed in the truck bed. "You're not listening," she says. "I don't have time to deal with a figment of my - or Karma's - imagination. There's a pack of werewolves out there and they're not going to stop until Karma's dead or they are."

She pulls the bag toward her, careful not to let her fingers even brush against Karma's leg

(more  _elo,_ more  _ira_ , more trouble)

and starts rifling through it.

"And, for the record," she says

(and she has literally  _no idea_  why she's still talking and if she lives through this - a huge fucking 'if' at this point - she's totally blaming it on the  _ira_ )

"if you really were Amy -  _my_ Amy - you'd know I was never afraid of Karma because  _I_  knew. Amy loved me." She pauses, her hands in the bag, fingers wrapping around the hilts of silver knives. "Amy  _loved_  me."

"I did," Amy says, leaning against the truck bed. "I loved my sexy DJ. I loved the Reagan that called me Shrimp Girl. I loved 'Kinky. I like it.' Reagan."

Reagan's hands close around the knives as another set of howls tears through the night.

"But like I said," Amy continues. "Pretending is what you do best, isn't it?"

Reagan wants to argue. She really does. She just can't.

"Do you remember when you told me?" Amy asks. "When you told me who…  _what_ … you really are?"

There's a flash of movement near the front of the truck and Reagan slips the knives from the bag, reaching back in for her guns, praying the silver ammo's still loaded.

"It was the night I saw you kill for the first time," Amy says and the gun slips from Reagan's hand, clattering against the truck bed. "That demon, the one with the fangs and the extra eyes and the whole 'I shall slay you and your children and your children's children' bit. I saw you kill it."

It was a beast, not a demon, but Reagan gets the point. And she remembers it well. Remembers not having the time to get Amy safely away, not having any way to hide it, to shield her from the truth.

Martin had always said it would happen. He'd always said Amy would find out, eventually. That sooner or later, their life would catch up and Reagan wouldn't be able to keep it a secret anymore.

He was right.

And look where that got him.

"I watched you kill it," Amy says. "And then you told me the truth. You told me you were a monster, a murderer, the Butcher of Brada." Amy stares down at the bag, the dark of the night the only thing obscuring the brutal contents within. "You told me the truth," she says. "Some of it, anyway."

Another flicker of light in the shadows. Closer now.

"How long did you think it would be, Reagan?" Amy draws closer, her arm dangling over the side of the truck, so dangerously close to Karma. "How long did you think it would be before I looked it up? How long did you think some vague story about killing 'some people' for your mother's empire was going to be enough for me?"

Reagan shakes her head, collecting the gun back up. "I didn't… I told her…"

"You told me what?" Amy snaps. "The truth? All of it? Bullshit. You told me what you could live with. What you thought  _I_  could live with."

"I told her what I was," Reagan says, the gun shaking in her hand. "I told her what they did to me. What they  _made_  me into."

There's another movement, a low growl from near the truck cab but Reagan's past caring, she's past worrying about the wolves or what they'll do.

It'll hurt less than this.

"I  _showed_ you," Reagan says. "I shifted for you. I let you see  _me_."

She doesn't even catch it. You. Not Amy.

_You._

"Yeah, you did," Amy says. "And you told me. About Lilita and Carmilla and about Brada. A quaint little village, isn't that what you called it?  _Little_." She takes another step closer and Reagan is barely able to stand her ground. "How many people, Reagan? 700? 800?"

Reagan shakes her head. "I don't remem - "

"Don't you fucking lie to me," Amy snarls at her. "You  _remember_. How many?"

Karma groans in the truck, her body seizing, the  _ira_  rolling through her, fighting to get out.

"How many - "

"One thousand and forty-seven," Reagan says, the number slipping off her tongue with ease, the same way it has every morning since it happened. The first thing she says, every day.

One thousand and forty seven. One thousand forty-seven people, the citizens of Brada.

"You remember," Amy says.

Of course she remembers. She remembers the number, she remembers the names. She can tell you every single name of every single man, woman, and child of Brada. Their names, their birthdays. What they did for every moment of every day of their lives.

What they were doing the moment those lives ended.

She can tell you how much pain they were in when they died. If they bled to death, alone and scared, or if they died in the arms of their lover or mother or father or some strangers who just happened to be there, just happened to be next to them when Santa Muerte destroyed them all.

Every day - every moment - for the last 170 years, she's remembered every one of them, she's heard their screams and felt their fear and felt the moments - all one thousand and forty-seven of them - when their hearts stopped.

And she's remembered the joy each one of those moments brought  _her_  - Santa Muerte - and how she replayed them all, one by fucking one, over and over again, savoring the feel, the taste of each one.

"You know why I turned to Karma?" Amy asks and her words are all Reagan hears, not the howls and the clattering of claws on the hood of the truck, not the thrumming of the  _ira_  in her brain. "Because with Karma, I  _knew_. I  _loved_  you, but I never knew."

"Never knew what?" Reagan asks, her eyes drifting to the top of the cab, to the faint points of light, the glimmering eyes staring down at her.

They're not human.

So why does she see so much fear in them?

"I never knew who I was with," Amy says and Reagan's head snaps back around, losing track of the wolf - and that's going to get her fucking killed, but she doesn't care - to stare at Amy. "I never knew if it was you sharing my life, my bed."

The claws scrabble across the top of the truck, the wolf poised to leap.

"I never knew if it was you," Amy says. "Or  _her_. The killer. The end of all."

The Butcher.

The Saint.

Amy steps back, fading into the shadows. "But the worst? The thing that drove me to Karma? The worst was knowing that  _you_ …" She takes one last step into the dark, fading from sight, her words carried on the cool night air.

"You never knew either."

And the wolf leaps.

* * *

It would have been their anniversary that week, the week when Reagan finally had enough.

She couldn't take it anymore. It had been seven months and she thought that maybe -  _maybe -_ it was time. Maybe it was time to say Amy's name and mean  _her_ , maybe it was time to stop waltzing around the elephant in the room and actually talk about the only thing they all really had in common anymore.

Pain.

It hurt to talk about Amy. Reagan knew that. It hurt to talk about her, to miss her, to think about her and Lord knew it hurt to fucking see her every day. But somewhere, some time over those seven months it had come to hurt worse to  _not_  talk about her. It hurt worse that they weren't pretending she wasn't gone.

They were pretending she never was.

Reagan had 200 years of pretending and far more closets she'd grown weary of hiding in than any of them. She was tired of it . So fucking tired.

She was tired of small talk, of chit chat, of pained expressions every time the conversation got anywhere near Amy. She was tired of spending lunches with people she loved but feeling the entire time like she was completely alone and then… oh… and then going home to her empty house

(house) (not  _home_ ) (not anymore)

and listening to silence and staring at her dead wife sitting across the room, perfect beautiful disaster of a reminder of what she'd never have again.

What she never should have had to begin with.

Reagan was tired. Tired of it all and tired of pretending she wasn't.

So she stopped.

"A dog," she said.

Farrah and Lauren both stopped mid-sentence to look at her. Baby Amy cooed from across the table and all the eyes on her made Reagan wonder, almost immediately, just what the  _fuck_  she'd been thinking.

"A dog?" Lauren asked. She glanced around the restaurant. "In here?"

Reagan shook her head. "No, I mean…" She fidgeted with her salad fork, her mind automatically pushing aside memories of Carmilla and etiquette lessons

_You need to_ appear  _lady like, proper, like one of them, a little game of pretend_

_Why?_

_So they never see you coming_

and she stared at the tablecloth. "I never said anything," she said. "It was going to be a surprise. I figured five years was long enough to wait, you know?"

Farrah reached over, dropping a hand onto Reagan's, stilling the fork against the table

(and Reagan had to fight -  _fight_  - the urge to twist it around, to drive the fork in her mother-in-law's hand, just to hear her scream Just so she could know, could know Farrah could still  _feel_ )

(feel like her)

"Reagan?" Farrah asked, the honey practically dripping off her drawl. "Sweetheart, are you -"

"I was going to get her a dog," Reagan said. "For our anniversary. She'd been asking for one since we got the house, I think she thought it might be good training for kids… I just kept putting it off and putting it off…"

Farrah's hand tensed and Reagan could  _feel_  the blood draining from it as the other woman started to pull away, but Reagan flipped her hand, catching Farrah's in her own.

"The kids thing was taking longer than we wanted," she said. "The doctors weren't sure… they  _said_  it would work. Eventually." Farrah's hand trembled in hers and Reagan held tighter. "They just kept saying it. Over and over. Eventually."

"Reagan," Lauren said. "I think maybe -"

Reagan didn't hear her or maybe she did and maybe -  _not maybe_  - she just didn't care.

"It wasn't meant to replace kids or be some kind of consolation present, you know?" She blinked back tears, refusing to cry. "It was more of a promise. I mean, that's what I'd told her all those years, every time she asked about getting a dog."

She looked up at Farrah, not surprised to see her mother-in-law shaking in her seat,  _her_  tears flowing freely.

She was even less surprised to see Amy right behind her.

"Eventually," Reagan said. "I told her we'd get a dog. Eventually."

Baby Amy cooed again, softer. Her rattle fell to the table and Lauren startled at the sound.

"I figured, if we got the dog, Amy would see," Reagan said, her eyes fixed somewhere over Farrah's shoulder, on something - someone - only she could see. "She'd get it, that eventually really did happen, that it wasn't some bullshit promise that would never come true."

Eventually.

Eventually, she'd leave the life. Eventually, she'd hang it up. Eventually, there wouldn't be one more monster to hunt, one more demon to kill. Eventually, they'd be a family - a real one - they'd have a life, a new one for the both of them, before the old one

( _Reagan's_ )

did something irreparable, something tragic, before it broke something they couldn't fix with a gun or a knife or some arcane spell in some dead language.

Reagan had always been sure she'd have the time, so sure that eventually was out there, just around the corner.

The tears clouded her vision, but she could still see Amy there. Just beyond her grasp. Just out of reach.

"He was a lab," she said. "A chocolate lab named Bruno and he would have loved you so fucking much."

And, suddenly, it was all too much and she bolted, running from the restaurant, running  _through_  a waiter, knocking their lunches to the floor and not looking back.

They had lunch again the next Sunday. Different restaurant. Same conversations. Same painted on smiles, same dance.

Reagan never brought up Amy again.

She never  _saw_  her again.


End file.
